Thoughts on Umineko

Part of me would like to do a much longer Umineko review and go way more in depth, but I'm already in the middle of writing two other huge game reviews, so I need to just do the sane thing and keep this one on the shorter side—by my standards, anyway. Sorry, Anthony.

Umineko When They Cry is, for sure, one of the most unique things I've ever experienced. I'll try to summarize my feelings about it without spoiling anything, but that's kind of difficult when the central mystery is what genre of story it even is. It's one of those stories where people tell you not to look up anything ahead of time. But I'll do my best.

Broadly speaking, Umineko is a linear visual novel about 12 members of a wealthy Japanese family getting together at an isolated island mansion, and then they start getting brutally murdered one after the other. The big question isn't just whodunnit, but whether these seemingly impossible closed room murders could have even been pulled off by a human being at all, or if it had to be the work of supernatural forces. After all, the servants have countless ghost stories about the island's so-called "Golden Witch" Beatrice, whose ominous portrait hangs in the foyer. Was this all her doing?

...At least, that's how the story presents itself at first. Basically every single one of Umineko's eight episodes (the first four being the "Question Arcs" and the remainder the "Answer Arcs") will upend the tea table just as you're starting to understand what you've read so far, adding a whole new layer to the story that makes you wonder if you really understand anything at all. This routine escalation leads to an experience where I was basically always nostalgic for the "simpler times" of the previous episodes, which I understood better in hindsight, even though when I was in the middle of those episodes I was often hopelessly confused. "I miss when this was just about Battler trying to explain how the stuff he's seeing could be done without magic," I'll say, even though at the time I had no idea how most of it could be explained without magic.

It's a matryoshka doll of metatext, a story full of metaphors and magical realism and trickery, and you're constantly learning how exactly you're supposed to interpret events beyond what's literally happening on the screen. This isn't a story where you can simply let the surreal imagery wash over you and get the picture based on vibes. Or, well, I guess you can do that, but the story holds a lot of contempt for that kind of reader. Umineko is constantly demanding that you "never stop thinking" and try to figure out what "really" happened on Rokkenjima, beneath all of the narrative's deception. It wants you to pay close attention, to question what you're looking at, to read between the lines, and to come up with your own solutions to the closed room logic puzzles. Much of the story consists of characters debating about the truth of the story they're in, but even then few answers regarding the murder mysteries are handed to you on a silver platter. Again, it can be overwhelming, but it makes for a very unique and engaging read. It's a lot of fun to read alongside someone else, like what I did with Anthony, so that you can talk about your theories as you're reading.

What of the underlying story beyond all the twists and turns, then? Well, there's a lot to like there. The complex web of relationships in the Ushiromiya family is fleshed out really well, and the characters involved frequently have a lot of interesting layers. Umineko strikes a really good balance where the actions of many characters are undoubtedly monstrous and unjustifiable, but you also understand how they got to be so fucked up in the first place. (Usually, anyway. I have my quibbles about some characters, but that's getting into spoilers.) A lot of these characters' stories are just so very, very sad. But it's not all suffering. There's also a lot of fun to be had with characters who have more comedic chemistry with each other. There's plenty of levity. And it's just so damn fun to watch Battler do the Phoenix Wright point and triumphantly propose the most batshit, out-of-left-field explanations possible for how the murders could have been accomplished without magic. He's frequently wrong, but he's wrong with such gusto, you just gotta root for the guy.

Though, I do have to admit, Umineko's literary aspirations can sometimes clash with its otaku pandering side. Sometimes this is fun. The witches mostly look like Touhou fan characters to me in a way that I find charming. The decision to frame many of the debates with the energy of an over-the-top shonen anime duel leads to some of the story's defining moments. That stuff's cool. But then it's like... well, on the one hand, you've got this story that pays very close attention to the suffering of the women in the Ushiromiya family, zeroing in on the ways in which their lives are shaped by misogyny and generational trauma and abuse in a way that feels incredibly grounded and real. That's kinda the heart of the story, and it nails that stuff so well that it borders on being a little hard to read at times. It's too real. But it also has to occasionally have a wacky scene where Battler wants to grab some titties, and the witches' side of the story has to be full of servant girls with exaggerated anime archetype personalities running around in outfits that conveniently expose the crotches of their frilly leotards. Stuff like that. A quote on Ryukishi's Wikipedia page describes his writing as alternating between "macabre scenes and schoolboy humor," and yep, that hits the nail on the head. There's nothing here that'll be out of the ordinary for anime watchers, but there's definitely some tonal whiplash born of Ryukishi's desire to write a love letter to early 20th century novelists and sell it to an audience of doujinshi-loving otaku at Comiket.

But the really big hurdle is just, y'know. The length. Did Umineko need to be longer than the Bible? Did it need to be twice as long as War and Peace, or almost 50% longer than Homestuck? For me, I think the answer is... no.

It certainly needed to be a long story, but I think you could cut the word count in half without actually cutting a single scene or story beat, just because Ryukishi has such a bad habit of repeating himself. Even within a single scene characters will often repeat themselves and get into circular conversations. Despite being a story that leaves the answers to many of its biggest mysteries as mere implications, there are some thematic points and facts about the characters' personal lives that really get beat into your head repeatedly. ("If he had seen another couple acting like that, he'd feel like throwing rocks at them," the narration says about the lengthy date scenes with George and his love interest in episode 2. Really captures how I felt!) I don't know how much of this is a translation thing, as is sometimes the case with redundant dialogue in Japanese media, and how much of it is just Ryukishi needing a better copy editor, but it definitely leads to a story that made me go "okay, I get it, can we move on" at multiple points. The slice of life parts that frontload most episodes are the absolute worst about this, though the climaxes of several episodes also feel incredibly drawn out to maximize the tension before an inevitable last second turnabout. Overall I don't feel like my time was poorly spent, I'm glad I read Umineko, but the prose is definitely not without its faults.

The sheer length of the mystery also makes it daunting to reread, even though the game outright tells you at a certain point that if you go back and read the story again then you should be able to piece together the truth. Part of me was tempted by this proposition, as I'd only have one chance in my life to solve the mysteries for myself before I know the truth forever, but that would've meant lord knows how many more hours spent going through this massive story, and that just wasn't appealing to me. If it was shorter, maybe I would've felt different. (In theory you can also go read the manga, which takes way less time, but I've been told the manga also spells a lot of things out way more bluntly, which defeats the purpose if you're trying to see if the VN truly gives you enough info to solve everything.)

But in the end, I enjoyed Umineko quite a bit. I think anyone with the time to spare, a stomach for some of the more traumatic subject matter discussed, and an interest in nerd shit from Japan should give it a shot.

Everyone will tell you to install this elaborate mod that replaces the art and adds voice acting from the PS3 port and whatnot, but I wanted something closer to the original experience, so I ignored all that and just played the Steam version totally vanilla. It won't kill you. The original sprites are genuinely my favorites by a huge margin. Any wonkiness in the art is outweighed by the amount of charm and personality that they have. The updated art displays more technical skill, but also looks more generic and completely changes the vibe of a lot of characters.

Really, I think one of my main takeaways is that I admire Umineko's resourcefulness. It does a lot with very, very little. It's literally just a bunch of text, some talk sprites that can change their facial expressions but not their poses, some filtered photo backgrounds, some ambient background noise, and some really great music. That's it. That's all it needed! I never felt the story was meaningfully hampered by its rudimentary presentation or lack of choices. If anything, it added to the charm for me. Sometimes polish and flashiness and "sauce" really aren't everything. (Though, y'know, the soundtrack being so good certainly didn't hurt its appeal.)

And that's about all I can say without getting into serious spoilers! If you have literally any interest in ever reading Umineko, stop here before I ruin the experience for you. Otherwise, if you have read Umineko and would like my thoughts on a couple things from very late in the game, head on over to this unlisted post.

Someday I'd like to read Higurashi as well, but, y'know, it's also long as hell, so I don't know when I'll get around to that. And maybe when the concept of war has been eradicated in real life Ryukishi will finally feel comfortable releasing Ciconia episodes again and I can start reading that, too.