Umineko: When They Cry

released on Aug 17, 2007

Umineko: When They Cry is a Japanese murder mystery visual novel. The story focuses on a group of eighteen people on a secluded island for a period of two days, and the mysterious murders that befall most of the people. The goal of the game is to discern whether the murderer is human or of some other supernatural source. The original releases contain no voice acting for the characters. While during gameplay, the Tips Mode can be viewed via the game's internal menu, which also includes save and load functions. These tips allow the player to read various supplementary information on the characters and story that may or may not be useful in solving the mystery. The ultimate goals of the gameplay involve reaching the truth behind the multi-cased mystery, determining where the gold is hidden, figuring out a solution in which ultimately everyone survives, and to solve the whole case by determining who the true murderer is in each chapter and whether it is due to supernatural events or human actions.


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i will now proceed to flagrantly shill this to my entire extended acquaintance circle

i have such mixed feelings towards this. i found the 1st episode such a complete slog, full of uninteresting (and very cursed, especially from battler) dialogue, and its so long that its hard to recommend. However a lot of this is so fuckin fun if you allow yourself to get sucked into the theatrics of it. The debates between battler and beatrice feels like a lot of the best parts of ace attorney. so idrk. i think a lot of my judgment is going to reserved until i find out all the answers in chiru.....

is his name actually battler
what is happening
peak fiction

First of all what is Umineko?
Well Umineko lies within the detective genre accompanied with a murder-mystery type of plot with a very meta style to it's storytelling and structure, the Ushiromiya family travel to an island named Rokkenjima to meet with the head of the clan to discuss family inheritance, but soon dead bodies start occurring and as the murders start to arise, you get presented with a lot of magic and magical interpretations of the many events that occur within, but where it gets interesting for me is with Battler, he is someone who is so adamant and has this sort of agency to prove that the killings were done by a human being and can be proved via logic, so you alongside Battler have to create some sense and produce a logical explanation to a very evidently non-natural phenomenon.
(spoilers from here on)
Battler:
One of the more stagnant characters within Umineko, he remains pretty static during the early episodes but gradually develops as we begin to enter the Answer arcs, he had such a brilliant performance in episode 8 and similar with Beatrice with 'confessions', Battler aswell had a very insane reveal that recontextualizes his entire character, even going as far back to his actual introduction and set-up to the story, which paints the entire picture of what his character is actually about.
Ange:
Definitely one of the strongest introductions to a character that I've ever seen, honestly I've never been more quickly attached to a character ever before, it was hard not to fall in love with her character even during episode 4. Ange partakes in so many roles throughout the story that enable her to connect with the many important themes of Umineko and every single one of those roles are so beautifully executed, Ange's character develops in the most natural yet beautiful ways that I've ever seen and has one of the most emotionally remarkable journey's with some of the most important moments that lie within episode 8. Within all aspects, Ange is great.
Beatrice:
Unlike Ange's character i wasn't sure that I would like her character, everything regarding her character during the majority of the question arcs seemed very vague, ambiguous and overall very non-elaborative, it felt like her character thrived over being implicit and the many interpretations that come with it. It wasn't until the answer arcs where I would start seeing her character though a clearer lens and start loving her character. Primarily though, it was with the 'confession' chapters where her character got propelled to the top for me and I genuinely started loving her character from there on, it felt as though the big bang happened inside my head and all of the information regarding her character and the insane amount of recontextualization that came along just started processing inside me that I could feel my brain getting fried, the more you get to know Beatrice the more you get to appreciate with how much she is connected with the themes and characters of Umineko. She is the heart of Umineko, the depth of her writing is clear, her constant exploration of her identity was always very intriguing. even within the question arcs, she always had such a strong and hype presence, like you knew something fun or extremely emotional was gonna get cooked up if Beatrice was on screen, and she never failed to deliver.