Customer Reviews

When They Cry, Vol. 1

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Higurashi is a lengthy and shocking. Yet, the sadistic (but cute) characters really make this anime hilarious. Yes, there is plenty of killing, but I really enjoyed watching the out-of-place cute youngsters turn into cold-blooded murderers for the most insanely unbelievable reasons.

Meiichi Maebara, a teenage boy, lives in Hinamizawa, a peaceful rural village. He plays and has fun with his friends, all girls. However, he quickly learns that Hinamizawa is a cursed town, in which every year at the Watanagashi Festival at least one person dies.

To make matters worse, his friends are trying to hide the truth from him--that they could have killed those people. Rena keeps creeping up to Maebara with a huge knife, the doctors inject him with needles, and people are dying left and right.

And yet, after Maebara commits suicide by stabbing his throat with his fingernails, the characters come back to life...
Well, not really.

Higurashi no naku koro ni (When They Cry) is actually based on a drama video game. There are many different chapters with different takes on the same story. For the first four chapters, lots of people die, and there is no happy ending. The next four chapters, however, give the reasons for the deaths. And yes, there is a happy ending in the last chapter.

However, this is a surprisingly complex soap opera, involving children who are abused by their aunts and uncles, kill others because they are in love and get possessed by ogre spirits. Yes, maybe this story is a little too unbelievable, but the murderers' motives are so bizarre and strange that the series actually turns into a comedy. The alternative plots are very intriguing, each one revealing another piece to the fascinating plot which involves drugs, UFO crashes and, yes, bioterrorism (don't ask).

This series is crazy, bloody and definitely not for kids. However, its storytelling is very gutsy, original and hilarious. There's nothing better than watching little kids kill each other for the stupidest reasons in a crazy town filled with conspiracies. I highly recommend this.

The story is about a period of time In June 1983 in a small rural but ficticious town in Japan. The main characters consists of a band of friends that all attend school together. Keichi, Mion, Rena, Satoko, and Rika are the general characters you will see throughout the series in addition to a few new characters that are introduced throughout the progression of the story.

The entire story is based on a series of eight PC games that were released in Japan over the period of about 2 years. However, this may be different from your ordinary anime as the story can be deceptively sweet and yet disturbing at times. The progression of how the story is told also follows the concepts behind the PC games relase run. There are "chapters" that are detailed in the series that explain and detail events that happen to the main characters. At times this can focus on one character, two characters or the group as a whole. However, in response to the previous poster, the story is not generally the same in every restart of the story. There are always new scenes of the village surroundings,dialog and plot are different in many cases. There are a few general commonalities you will see in each "chapter" of the series, as in the period in time it takes place, which is always June 1983, and the festival that precedes the ending of all chapters.

If I could summarize the show into a solid description I would say its a different look into the anime genres of horror, mystery, and an entirely different perspective on how to relate these concepts to the viewer. Honestly, the changing of chapters is there more to provide you clues behind the "big mystery" then it is to annoy you or recycle plot. After watching the first dvd I can confidently say that in most cases the "chapters" type story telling shouldn't bother the average viewer. Overall, this is a very well done series and the story is always changing and adapting to whichever character is focused on. Any person who enjoys anime will probably enjoy this as well.

I'm unsure if the english dub is any good, but the Japanese voices are very well done and fit scenes and moods perfectly. The only gripe I can really give you about the series is some of the animation quality is a bit lower then anime you'd currently see released. However, if you enjoyed series like ergo proxy, elfen lied, and other mystery/horror/action titles. You should enjoy the subtleties of the story telling and the mystery behind the happy charade that the show plays out upon. Overall the entire series is very enjoyable and is more then worth the price put on amazon.

My sister got this a while ago, we thought it was gonna be one of those shows where it's plotless and a random gore fest.
However we were surprised by the fact of how intricate the plot is, not going to spoiling anything, but I would highly suggest watching this show. It is a horror series, with a lot of crazy and creepy scenes, which some are quite violent, if your squeamish those scenes might freak you out. At some points it's pretty cute though.

"When They Cry" is an anime adapted from a popular series of Japanese murder-mystery video games. And how do video game adaptations usually fare, class? Well, if this first volume is any indication, consider the curse shattered. The first 5 episodes of this anime are fabulous and the story is being told in amazingly bold form. It closely resembles both The Wicker Man and Rosemary's Baby in tone and themes, but adds that brand of cloying cuteness that can only be found in anime which only manages to accentuate the disturbing content. This is a series I absolutely cannot wait to see more of. Makes me glad that there are already six volumes out.

Keichi is a transfer student making friends at his new school in the village of Hinamizawa. he's already found his way into a club of energetic girls who play games and enact embarrassing punishments on the loser. It's adorable. But the village has secrets. Lots of 'em. And nearly as many endearing characters to go with those buried secrets. Each year, they hold a festival. Each year somebody dies on that night and another disappears altogether. Nobody talks about it. It is simply dismissed as the curse of the village's guardian deity and those who vanish are referred to as having been "spirited away by the demon". The more Keichi learns, the more frightening this anime becomes. Who are his new friends and why have they been connected to every single victim? "When They Cry" is a tale of paranoia, secrets & lies (gotta have those), mystery, and suspense so thick that a cherubic anime girl could cut with a very large cleaver. And that's just the first arc of a story that will be retold in many different ways. Hopefully, it can maintain some of the freshness and genius of this first arc.

What sets this apart from any other murder-mystery I've seen is that we see the ending (one of many more to come) at the finish of the first four episodes. After that, time is rewound and we are taken back to the beginning to see a different sequence of events and fall in love with the characters all over again in spite of knowing (part of) the horrible truth. The cast bugged me for the first 10 minutes or so with their cutesy character designs and cliche anime mannerisms, but by the end of the first episode, I was hooked. And it wasn't just the people clawing their own throats open. It's the fright of seeing a typically darling girl for this medium turn into a menacing entity for just a second before switching back to her saccharine self. Or the way their pupils narrow cat-like into slits as they innocently (or maybe not) point out similarities between Keichi and the last student to "transfer" away from the school without a trace. The first climax in episode four will drop you jaw, guaranteed. But by the end of the very next twenty minutes, all will be forgiven and you will again be wrapped up in the sweetness of the same characters whose lives you just saw end horrifically.

This is as good a first volume as I've ever seen for an anime series. I will be gobbling up the rest as soon as i can get my hands on them. Anybody looking for a new kind of animated horror, this should be your next stop.

"Higurashi no Naku Koro ni" or as it has apparently been incorrectly translated into "When they cry" (it should have been "When the Cicadas Cry"). Is a grade A anime, for those of you who enjoy long drawn out stories that keep a central mystery hidden from the viewer until the end of the series (around 50 episodes or so). In that way the series is sort of like "Lost" except far, far, far more violent and disturbing. Though unlike "Lost" this anime does have an ending with an actual answer.

So if you can handle a long drawn out show and have the stomach for some truly brutal violence directed at children or children directed at other children or children directed at adults then by all means get this anime. Not to make it sound like that happens in every scene, most of the show is dedicated towards the relationships between the characters, progress towards figuring out what is going on and usually a problem for that story arc that confronts them, that at least in beginning usually ends badly.

If you're wondering what a Cicadas is. It's an insect that can make a loud buzzing sound. You hear it a lot in this anime and others as the insect enjoys warm tropical weather. So as you can see the title doesn't exactly mean cry, as in I'm sad, it also means cry like a baby kitten's cry for its mother. Get it, cry = sound. The whole title is a round about way of saying summer time, which is what the characters of this anime find themselves reliving over and over.

This is a very eye catching anime because it has colorful characters, cute lolis, and disturbing violence. At the beginning of the series you'll feel that you're watching a harem comedy, you know the lucky guy that spends time with his girlfriends at school, they make fun of him he makes fun them you get the picture. In the second episode you'll see a 180° change from comedy to the chilling mystery of the gruesome deaths in the village caused by unknown forces at the Cotton Drifting Festival. From here Keiichi our "lucky" guy is threatened and disturbed by his classmates, like when they delivered food for him just make this cruel prank involving needles.

I don't want to spoil too much but I'll say that this series can be compare to TALES FROM THE CRYPT (the series), at the beginning there is comedy, the middle has the involving plot and the ending has that disturbing twist. You'll understand why when you see episode 5.

The plot was very intriguing it was like watching Phone Booth, Enemy of the State or Taxi Driver for the first time.

Yes there are few scenes of violence but the series is more suspense than horror.

If you like Elfen Lied or Gantz then this is must have for your collection.

Higurashi is a lengthy and shocking. Yet, the sadistic (but cute) characters really make this anime hilarious. Yes, there is plenty of killing, but I really enjoyed watching the out-of-place cute youngsters turn into cold-blooded murderers for the most insanely unbelievable reasons.

Meiichi Maebara, a teenage boy, lives in Hinamizawa, a peaceful rural village. He plays and has fun with his friends, all girls. However, he quickly learns that Hinamizawa is a cursed town, in which every year at the Watanagashi Festival at least one person dies.

To make matters worse, his friends are trying to hide the truth from him--that they could have killed those people. Rena keeps creeping up to Maebara with a huge knife, the doctors inject him with needles, and people are dying left and right.

And yet, after Maebara commits suicide by stabbing his throat with his fingernails, the characters come back to life...
Well, not really.

Higurashi no naku koro ni (When They Cry) is actually based on a drama video game. There are many different chapters with different takes on the same story. For the first four chapters, lots of people die, and there is no happy ending. The next four chapters, however, give the reasons for the deaths. And yes, there is a happy ending in the last chapter.

However, this is a surprisingly complex soap opera, involving children who are abused by their aunts and uncles, kill others because they are in love and get possessed by ogre spirits. Yes, maybe this story is a little too unbelievable, but the murderers' motives are so bizarre and strange that the series actually turns into a comedy. The alternative plots are very intriguing, each one revealing another piece to the fascinating plot which involves drugs, UFO crashes and, yes, bioterrorism (don't ask).

This series is crazy, bloody and definitely not for kids. However, its storytelling is very gutsy, original and hilarious. There's nothing better than watching little kids kill each other for the stupidest reasons in a crazy town filled with conspiracies. I highly recommend this.

This anime is a wonderful challenge for the intelecctually gifted. I thorughly enjoyed every episode and would reccomend it to any anime fan.

This series is a psychological mystery-murder series based in the early eighties.

It's about 3 girls, and 1 boy, who live in a small town in Japan. This town has some rather dark secrets.

You're supposed to find out what's truth,and what's just delusions, or false. However, it's easier said then done, since this is an adaptation of a sound novel series and lacks a lot of the original content. However, it's still great.

This is a great dub, but you can change it to the japanese version with subtitles if you want.

I sort of dislike this arc, due to future arc reasons, but it's still a great arc.

Keiichi, the protagonist, is a 16 year old boy. The "villians" in this arc are a 15 year old girl, Rena, and a 17 year old girl, Mion, who are his best friends, and love interests. There are two 9 year olds, but they don't really do anything in this arc.

Higurashi is my favorite anime series. But, I thought I'd say, if you want to enjoy this show, DO. NOT. judge it by the first DVD, or even the first few DVDs. Why? Because it starts out horrific, but this is really not a horror anime. Sure, it's disturbing and scary, but if you watch the show all the way through, it's really... more of a drama that has a little bit of every genre.

This is really a show that's confusing, but once you watch it all the way through and understand it, it's really amazing. Beautiful (and original) plot, well-developed and likable characters, a little bit of each genre, emotional, good themes... And then there's the matter of artwork and music and such. I love the music, the artwork's okay, but the second season artwork is just beatiful.

So about this DVD. This has Onikakushi-hen (Spirited Away by the Demon Chapter) and the first episode of Watanagashi-hen (Cotton Drifting Chapter). While Onikakushi-hen seems to work as a story already, it's really just an introduction. It sets up the main mysteries of the show and foreshadows later arcs. The answer arc to this is Tsumihoboroshi-hen (Atonement Chapter), which solves a lot of the mysteries and reveals the actual theme of the arc (the theme continues throughout the story). Watanagashi-hen shows a little more character development later on (ie "Give me back Mion, my best friend in the world!"), it's definitely not what it seems. (Once again, it's completely different after seeing its answer counterpart, "Meakishi-hen", or Eye Opening Chapter.)

The voices in the Japanese version are perfect, while the English dub has a few good voices, but not the best acting. Still, better than most English dubs.

Overall, even if this DVD doesn't have any of the things I like most about the series, it's still really great.

-Sam (I'm on my Mom's account, okay? I'm too lazy to get my own. XD)