When They Cry - Higurashi and Umineko

Seems like the new When They Cry was pushed back to Summer 19 too. I'm pretty sure it was initially planned for December…

New When They Cry preview

So urban cyberpunk battles, well that's definitely something new

Damn, they weren't kidding when they said it would be different. >.>

Kikonia no Naku Koro ni, huh… Seems like a fictional animal this time.

I created a sandbox page. We can fill it up as new info comes in.

And I realized too late that "Kikonia" was in fact the Latin word "Ciconia" meaning "stork". Good thing I didn't create the actual page…

Edited by Lyendith on Nov 29th 2018 at 1:23:45 PM

I did not see that coming.

By the way, should we add "Ciconia" to the thread's name?

Is dis a great place for discussing Ciconia or should I create a separate thread for it?

It's a When They Cry game, we can talk about it here. It's not like the thread is super active right now.

Somebody moved the sandbox to VisualNovel.Ciconia When They Cry. Since it's an unreleased work that has less than three valid examples, there's talk of cutting it. If you can add more examples, we can keep that from happening. And remember, no speculation.

Whoa. Finished playing through the monstrosity that was Umineko. Overall I enjoyed it a lot but the ending left me cold.

There's a lot of horrible stuff happening to people in this game. And almost every time Battler manages to figure something out it's immediately undercut with "Ha! That was completely wrong you dumb fucking idiot!". But I'm always able to push through that disappointment and the tragedy because there's the promise that at the end the tables will turn and I'll get the catharsis of seeing the truth behind the puzzles revealed. And I guess technically the game did give me all the clues and revelations needed to figure everything out. But "reread everything with the knowledge you now have to find out the answers!" is something you really really really don't want to hear after going through 110 hours of novel. Nobody's got time for that. And yeah yeah. I know, the whole final arc was about how the "truth" wasn't really important. But the note the game ends on is Beatrice committing suicide, which really bummed me out and left me with a hollow feeling after everything was over. The game gives you the parts of the "truth" that are super depressing, but not the parts that would give you catharsis. It's the worst of both worlds. I still enjoyed a whole lot of the story so it's not like I wasted my time, but this really drives home how important a satisfying ending is to how you look back at a work.

There was one thing that was really bugging me when I was reading that I considered asking about here but ended up solving itself. It was how the story kept acting like Shannon and George was the most romantic thing ever when she was 16 and he was 23. Especially when Shannon talks about how she asked Beatrice for the love charm when she was in middle school and George was in college and alarm bells kept blaring in my head. I was going to ask if the game ever acknowledges that this was fucked up. It ended up being mostly fine since she's actually 19, but I wonder how a response to that question might have communicated that without giving things away.

Edited by Moth13 on Jun 3rd 2019 at 12:54:50 PM

There are implications that George stole the letter that Battler sent to Shannon. Just in case you thought he needed to be any more of a creepy dick.

It kinda felt like at some point R07 just forgot that George was supposed to be much older than his cousins and Shannon, especially when you get those flashbacks of a high-schooler being jealous of a 12-year-old… But even without that, there are plenty of red flags in his interactions with Shannon. Notably how he never seems like he's even trying to know more about her as a person − it's always what she brings to him, how he became a better person by meeting her and how he will make her happy.

This series is all about reading between the lines, and boy are the between-lines disturbing with George…

Regarding the "I don't have the time to reread everything from the start", that might be why Ryuukishi added the "Confession" part to the Episode 8 manga, but some complained that giving away the answers so explicitly defeated the point of the story (someone on Tumblr harshly summed it up by saying "Confession was made for people who didn't care about Yasu in the first place")… I understand both points of view. Rereading the whole thing and feeling all the pieces click is one hell of an experience that rewards the most invested readers, and that I deeply cherish myself… but it can leave less invested readers − or those who have less free time − on the sidelines.

Regarding the lack of catharsis though, I don't entirely agree. I honestly shed tears of joy at the final sequence.

Edited by Lyendith on Jun 11th 2019 at 1:43:55 PM

If George was intended to be a shitty person then that would make me feel a lot better. Because otherwise you kind of have to grit your teeth and headcanon George/Shannon as younger/older during any of the 800 scenes where they talk about how perfect their relationship is.

The scene where Battler reunites with everyone in the Golden Land? Yeah I can see how it was meant to be that moment of catharsis. But for me, after everything that had come before it just felt very fake and hollow.

Dang, what an arrogant thing to say. I wouldn't read over 110 hours of "anything" if I wasn't super invested in it. Wanting a payoff for that investment doesn't change that.

Also this is something I've seen a lot when I look around at Umineko discussion, but why do people refer to Shannon/Clair/Beatrice as "Yasu"? Didn't she hate that name and abandon it? Especially because in real life, referring to a transgender person with a name they've thrown away is unbelievably offensive.

I think George, just like everybody else, is supposed to be kind of shitty and also kind of not. He genuinely loves Shannon, but there's some pretty deep unhealtiness in that love.

Less questionable than the adults, but more than the other two cousins, I'd say.

Edited by Cozzer on Jun 12th 2019 at 6:45:08 PM

The character (who, being fictional, doesn't need anyone to be offended on their behalf, and "shitty things happen in real life" is only relevant in fiction when discussing how well or poorly the author handled a particular sensitive issue) is referred to as such for a variety of reasons: 1) It's a shoutout to the Japanese equivalent of The Butler Did It and/or The Dog Was the Mastermind. Personally, I prefer the name they gave to Jessica, "Sayo".

2) It's an alternative way to point to the person behind the murders without the confusion of Shannon/Kanon/Beatrice, as those are separate personas the character took on to cope with their situation. As for any alternative names, Lion is explicitly an alternate universe version where tragedy was avoided, and Clair may or may not be a viable candidate depending on whether you see her as a metaphor or a stand-in "actress".

3) The issues behind the character are due to having received gender reassignment surgery at birth in order to save the character's life, having been raised as a girl because the guardians were idiots who believed humans are blank slates, and having lived in a supremely dysfunctional family environment. If any one of those things didn't happen or turned out differently, the character would not have become a figurative time bomb waiting to explode. Simply putting the label "transgender" on the character misses the trees for the forest.

Edited by dotchan on Jun 12th 2019 at 1:40:50 PM

Well, their official name is Yasuda Sayo, but we didn't learn that before the manga made it clear. At the time the VN came out Yasu was really the only way to refer to the "original" character − the other potential names were associated with specific personnas.

I vehemently disagree with the idea of "It's okay to use offensive language for fictional characters just because they're not real and it doesn't reflect at all on how I view real life people".

Also, the rest of that interpretation aside, Lion in the "perfect" timeline is shown to be going through some genderfeels of their own, so Beatrice is definitely not cis, even if the specifics vary because of different life situations.

Shitty things have happened to everybody since the beginning of time, so theoretically, no topic is safe. Obviously some topics are more sensitive than others, but at least when it comes to fiction I only care about how it relates to the story.

I interpret Lion's answer to Will's question of "are you a boy or a girl" more as reacting incredulously to his tactlessness. In other words， "Will (and by extension the player), I just underwent an existential crisis, this isn't the right time to sate your personal curiosity." Meta-wise, Lion's gender (however you define gender) and sexuality are irrelevant to the story (and fanfiction is free to go wherever they like with it), but Sayo's (or whatever one wishes to call them—honestly, any of their names has tremendous baggage attached) issues are as much a result of nurture as nature.

There's quite a difference between shitty thing being portrayed in fiction, and real life people being being shitty in how they discuss that fiction.

On Lion: No, it's not just about Will. Lion mentions that they give the "My Gender is: None of your business" response to everyone, since it comes up a lot. And they thank Will for not caring about gender, so it's something that matters to them, not simply a flippant response to tweak Will's nose. Story wise, bringing up Lion's gender serves to introduce and legitimize Beatrice's own gender identity, and prime readers to read between the lines of a lot of the early parts of Clair's story.

Edited by Moth13 on Jun 19th 2019 at 8:33:07 AM

I'm not sure I'd consider Lion trans though. From what they said it seems to be sensitivity over their androgynous appearance, not about their actual identity.

According to Will there was also some teasing from Bern, what with piece!Jessica not using gendered sibling terms and such…

I just learned today that a Switch version of Higurashi exists... in Japanese-only, of course. Fantastic. I've been wanting English releases of the novels for years, but only the PC version has been officially translated.

Wasn't Ciconia supposed to be released this month? Do we have a precise date?

It got delayed to September

But there is an opening movie now

…Takano and Okonogi are still around, it seems.