Higurashi no Naku Koro ni

Well, just as expected, there was no reaction to the previous post, mainly coz not many of you are into what I'm into. Man, I gotta get a new circle of friends, hehe.

This time it's about anime as well. But I have pictures! No more YouTube videos!

We all know that Japan has a healthy doujin culture, which actually refers to amateur self-published media, be it manga, games, etc. Out of all these amateur groups, a few stand out.

One of them is 07th Expansion, which has now turned into a fully commercial organization. It consists of two brothers, one in charge of screenplay and illustrations, the other does the scripting. Even the dad is involved, doing homepage management.

Together, they produced a series of visual novels called Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, or in English "When the cicadas cry".



That's not the visual, btw.

Anyway, the games were so famous that an anime was made out of it! But how did it get to be so famous?

Well, we're first brought to the viewpoint of Keiichi, a new guy in the village. There he meets 4 moe girls (roughly translated from anime slang to English as "very cute girls"). One day, he finds out about a series of annual murders.

Suddenly, the girls don't seem to be cute and innocent anymore...



Welcome to arguably the main highlight of the show! This show brings a new term to English anime blogs everywhere: PSYCHO-MOE! For full effect, faces are twisted and turned so much that an innocent smile can turn into a demonic grin.



So yes, it's a murder mystery anime. A few key scenes were seriously frightening, especially with all the psycho-emo faces and blood splattering all over.

I lent the show to hoshi-chan and leeyean, and they couldn't bear to go past episode 5, because of a certain *stab* *stab* scene at the beginning :D



The other interesting part of the show is that the episodes, just like the visual novels, are divided into arcs. Each arc contains 2-6 episodes, and they seem to restart the setting at the beginning of each arc i.e. dead characters are alive again, etc.

Is there a reason behind this? Not telling you! :P



Once you look past the murders, blood and scary faces, there's actually quite a cool plot. I, for one, am very intrigued by the story. I agree with Daim though, "The plot seems like what an amateur would come up with". But it is the execution and what they fill in-between is what counts.

(Oh the animation is inconsistent though. Be wary, animation buffs.)

And now, the second season of the anime is running! I'm up to episode 6 out of 13.

More mysteries shall be revealed! What's causing all these murders? What's the fate of the village? Who's playing around with all their faces? I'll find out soon enough!