Umineko no Naku Koro ni (Umineko: When They Cry)

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: When They Cry 3, When the Seagulls Cry, When They Cry: Seagulls

Japanese: うみねこのなく頃に

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Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 26

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Jul 2, 2009 to Dec 24, 2009

Premiered: Summer 2009

Broadcast: Unknown

Producers: Geneon Universal Entertainment, Frontier Works, Sotsu, Movic

Licensors: NIS America, Inc.

Studios: Studio Deen

Source: Visual novel

Genres: Horror, Mystery, Supernatural, Suspense

Themes: Gore, Psychological

Duration: 23 min. per ep.

Rating: R - 17+ (violence & profanity)

Statistics

Score: 7.04¹ (scored by 92,287 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #4178²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1090

Members: 221,061

Favorites: 1,960

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Synopsis

Considered as the third installment in the highly popular When They Cry series by 07th Expansion, Umineko no Naku Koro ni takes place on the island of Rokkenjima, owned by the immensely wealthy Ushiromiya family. As customary per year, the entire family is gathering on the island for a conference that discusses the current financial situations of each respective person. Because of the family head's poor health, this year involves the topic of the head of the family's inheritance and how it will be distributed.

However, the family is unaware that the distribution of his wealth is the least of Ushiromiya Kinzou's (family head) concerns for this year's family conference. After being told that his end was approaching by his longtime friend and physician, Kinzou is desperate to meet his life's true love one last time: the Golden Witch, Beatrice. Having immersed himself in black magic for many of the later years in his life, Kinzou instigates a ceremony to revive his beloved upon his family's arrival on Rokkenjima. Soon after, a violent typhoon traps the family on the island and a string of mysterious murders commence, forcing the eighteen people on the island to fight for their lives in a deadly struggle between fantasy and reality.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Umineko no Naku Koro ni - Episode 1: Legend of the Golden Witch, Umineko no Naku Koro ni - Episode 2: Turn of the Golden Witch, Umineko no Naku Koro ni - Episode 3: Banquet of the Golden Witch, Umineko no Naku Koro ni - Episode 4: Alliance of the Golden Witch, Umineko no Naku Koro ni
Alternative setting:	Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
Spin-off:	Umineko no Naku Koro ni Specials

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Beatrice

Main

Ohara, Sayaka
Japanese

Ushiromiya, Battler

Main

Ono, Daisuke
Japanese

Ushiromiya, Ange

Main

Satou, Rina
Japanese

Ushiromiya, Maria

Main

Horie, Yui
Japanese

Kanon

Main

Kobayashi, Yuu
Japanese

Shannon

Main

Kugimiya, Rie
Japanese

Ushiromiya, Jessica

Main

Inoue, Marina
Japanese

Ushiromiya, George

Main

Suzumura, Kenichi
Japanese

Bernkastel, Frederica

Supporting

Tamura, Yukari
Japanese

Lambdadelta

Supporting

Ono, Fuyuka
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Okamura, Takema

Producer

Oomori, Hiroyuki

Producer

Urasaki, Nobumitsu

Producer

Danno, Yoshito

Assistant Producer

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Opening Theme

"Katayoku no Tori (片翼の鳥)" by Akiko Shikata (志方あきこ)

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Ending Theme

"la divina tragedia ~Makyoku~ (la divina tragedia~魔曲~)" by Jimang

Reviews

Jun 17, 2023

PipeOrganLover

Recommended

This just my opinion, but only watch the first few episodes. The first 4 episodes is amazing classic murder mystery horror, near peak as far as anime horror goes. The first 4 eps are definitely worth your time to watch, and I can't recommend them enough. But once you reach ep 5 that is the start of where the story massively changes and turns into something huge, drawn out, and overly convoluted to follow. The first 4 eps earned it a higher rating than I would give it based on the remaining episodes. Not saying that the remainder isn't good, it is just a lot ...

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Jan 22, 2022

hexashadow13

Mixed Feelings

tl;dr: An anime that is literally just building up mysteries haphazardly without pushing towards solving any of them.

Umineko no Naku Koro ni is a series based on a series of visual novels that is set in the same universe as Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. A lot of reviews seem to involve comparisons between the anime and visual novel from those that are already fans of the visual novel and seem to dislike the anime as a bad adaptation. This will definitely not be one of those as I simply have not read the visual novel and thus literally can’t make such a comparison. I ... will however have some brief comparisons to Higurashi, in that both series of visual novels as far as I can tell seem to follow the same structure, but at least in terms of the anime it worked much better in Higurashi than it did in Umineko.

To put it simply for the sake of avoiding spoilers, ultimately this anime is about a logical battle between the protagonist Ushiromiya Battler and the antagonist Beatrice. Ushiromiya is an incredibly wealthy and powerful family with their own private island. They gather on that island for a family meeting where they are to discuss who will take over as the next head. However, a series of mysterious deaths occur, seemingly parts of a ritual at the end of which the witch Beatrice is summoned. However, Battler refused to acknowledge the existence of magic or witches. More mysterious deaths occur up until the climax of the ritual, but Battler still refuses to acknowledge the existence of witches, even when Beatrice appears before him.

Apparently the ritual isn’t complete and Beatrice isn’t fully summoned until he does. Thus, Beatrice pulls Battler outside of the world, which is henceforth referred to as the gameboard, and causes it to loop back to before the ritual. I should note that Battler himself stays outside the gameboard, with a different Battler that has no knowledge of previous loop present on the gameboard in his place. The ritual repeats, though with a different scenario where different people die under different circumstances. Thus, the core conflict of the anime is mysterious deaths occurring and Battler having to explain how they could have occurred without the existence of witches or magic. This looping occurs a number of times with a different scenario to the deaths each time.

This seems pretty contradictory from the get go. Why is someone in such fantastical circumstances as being pulled out of the world to watch over the world looping so strongly denying the existence of magic? I don’t think the anime ever explains the answer to this explicitly or implicitly, which can make things seem kind of confusing and dumb at first. Still, as it goes on, it becomes clear from context that it really doesn’t matter what Battler truly believes. Before he encountered any of the obviously supernatural phenomenon, he firmly refused to believe in witches or magic, and somehow he lucked into that disbelief being an obstacle to Beatrice. Thus, regardless of what the truth is, the victory condition for Battler, or at least a condition where he doesn’t lose, is to continue denying the existence of magic or witches.

The premise gets even more complicated from there. While in the first arc Battler didn’t encounter any actual supernatural phenomenon until he was pulled outside of the gameboard, every subsequent arc has the deaths shown as occurring through supernatural phenomenon, such as with having demons teleport into locked rooms to kill people. But apparently, due to the rules of how magic works, the supernatural and realistic explanations exist simultaneously, in what is somewhat confusingly analogized to Schrodinger’s Cat. While what the viewer and Battler are shown is clearly supernatural, what matters is the circumstances at the end, and for each of those a realistic explanation also must exist. Showing these supernatural phenomenon and their results is the moves that Beatrice makes to attack Battler, and Battler counters those moves by substituting them realistic explanations.

This brings me to my first fundamental issue with this anime. From what I understand, there is an actual solution to each of these mysteries that completely makes sense and is satisfying. But neither the viewer nor Battler are given enough information to determine it. I think to at least some degree the confusion this causes for the viewer is unintentional. There is no clear differentiation made between what falls under the realm of the supernatural and what doesn’t. Thus, it isn’t entirely clear what requirements the realistic explanation has to satisfy. Thus, someone watching with the intention of actually trying to figure out the solutions will not find such an experience pleasant because the anime seems to actively fight against people doing so.

And ultimately, as far as the anime gets, the true answers to all the puzzles are never revealed. A satisfying explanation for the puzzles may exist, however as per the rules of the game Battler and Beatrice are playing Battler doesn’t actually have to find it. He just has to come up with some sort of explanation that works, no matter how ridiculous or how implausible it is. For example, for a locked room murder of three people he can explain it away as all three killing each other simultaneously or as one of them killing the other two and then accidentally killing themselves. These explanations are clearly dumb and if that’s what the actual solutions to the mysteries were that would make this entire franchise dumb, so I’m going to go out on a limb and considering all the praise it gets assume that that is not the case. But as far as the anime gets that’s the only explanations the viewer gets as that’s all Battler has to give.

Why none of the puzzles are properly solved in this arc has to do with the structure of the original VN. How that was structured is that there were a series of question arcs that essentially just presented the mysteries, and a series of answer arcs that revealed the answers to the mysteries. Thus, these arcs don’t have the answers because the reveal of all of them in the answer arcs will flow better according to the narrative the writer came up with. This is also something that was done in Higurashi, so I’m certainly not doubting that such a structure can work. However, as previously mentioned, I think it worked a lot better in Higurashi’s anime than it did in this one. The first reason for that is that while the first season of Higurashi didn’t have all the answer arcs for it’s questions arcs, it did have some of them, so while everything certainly wasn’t resolved, there was at least some explanation for some things. The anime for Umineko is purely question arcs without any answer arcs so absolutely no explanation is properly provided, which is really unsatisfying.

The second reason is the difference in genre. The first season of Higurashi was mainly a horror anime. Even if what’s going on doesn’t make all that much sense, the horror aspect can still work really well and in the case of Higurashi it absolutely did. Even without any answers, just as a horror anime it’s enjoyable to watch. However, Umineko is pure mystery, and unlike with horror which is much more journey oriented, the destination for mysteries is critical. A mystery story needs a satisfying explanation in order to work. Thus, for an anime relying solely on mystery, without a satisfying explanation for at least some of it’s mysteries the anime itself just doesn’t seem all that functional.

The third reason is that Higurashi felt like it had more to it beyond the core plot. Higurashi had a good amount of comedy and slice of life that worked well in getting the viewers invested in the cast and circumstances surrounding them. Umineko has nothing close to that. We get a bit on a lot of characters, but not enough to get really invested in any of them. That may come down to there being a lot more character in Umineko compared to Higurashi, and Umineko also focusing on them more evenly as compared to Higurashi which focused on a key character each arc. The end result is that I found certain characters kind of cool or charismatic and was also able to empathize with certain characters to a degree, but the level of investment in the characters was still pretty low compared to where it would need to be for the story to matter to me because I cared about the characters involved.

The same applies to the world building. There’s a lot of overarching mysteries regarding a lot of things with various hints dropped throughout that are pretty intriguing, but they’re left way too abstract, ambiguous, and hard to really get into. Compared to more down to earth concepts in Higurashi, like the town of Hinamizawa, its history, and the lore surrounding those, it’s a lot harder to get invested in discovering the truth behind the overarching plot. Ultimately, it’s quite possible that all this build up does lead somewhere worthwhile, and given how popular the franchise is I will give it the benefit of the doubt and assume that it does. However, as far as the anime goes, it’s just 26 episodes of build up things that are never used well, which results in the anime most of the time simply being pretty dull, badly paced, and not that enjoyable to watch.

In terms of art and animation, I felt it was pretty great. The general sense of style to things was nice and I especially liked the character designs. There seem to be a lot of complaints regarding that, but I feel they’re mostly nitpicky and the production values overall were pretty solid. The soundtrack too I think fit well and had a couple really nice tracks for key moments. The OP is pretty great overall. The visuals change as the anime goes on in ways that feel they fit the anime really well. The audio has some Italian in it which I suppose fits the western opulence theme pretty well, and is otherwise pretty good music too. The ED was also decent enough.

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Apr 21, 2024

DarkSlayerVergil

Not Recommended

If you intend to start Umineko No Naku Koro Ni, the anime is a bad starting point. A lot of things are extremely rushed, not to mention it only covers the question arcs. Studio DEEN had a bad idea taking a 100+ hours VN and making it a 26 episode anime. If you want to start Umineko, get the Visual Novel, or the manga. The manga does a way better job than the anime does. However, the best way to enjoy Umineko is by reading the visual novel. You can watch the anime after you've finished Umineko No Naku Koro Ni VN fully, just to ...

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Umineko no Naku Koro ni

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Beatrice

Ushiromiya, Battler

Ushiromiya, Ange

Ushiromiya, Maria

Kanon

Shannon

Ushiromiya, Jessica

Ushiromiya, George

Bernkastel, Frederica

Lambdadelta

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Umineko no Naku Koro ni

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Synopsis

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Ending Theme

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