![[Review] When They Cry](http://www.anime3000.com/images/front_page/whentheycry.png)
It’s been about three weeks since I’ve seen the last episode of When They Cry, perhaps better known as Higurashi no Naku koro ni. The reason it’s taken so long to write this review is because I have no idea what to make of it. Standard horror show? No. Too many cutesy moments. Moe fluff? The writing is too smart. Deconstruction of moe fluff? Too pandering. A month and a few missed deadlines later and I’m still not sure.
It’s the year 1984 and city boy Keichi Maebara has just moved into the sleepy town of Hinamizawa. With such a small population, the dapper young lad quickly becomes a hit with the fine young ladies of the town, especially the ever so ditzy Rena and the sexy-fierce Shion.
Yet, not all is what it seems: every year on the day of a town festival, there is a ghastly murder followed by a mysterious disappearance. As the name of the feared god Oyashiro-sama gets whispered around and the girls start getting slowly ever so loopy, it starts to become clear that the cycle is underway again, in more ways than one. Wash the knives. Rinse out the blood. Repeat the slaughter.
As it stands, the basic formula is a mixture of David Lynch’s 1980s masterpiece Twin Peaks, town with a dark secret and Run Lola Run’s time-twisting antics; only with more murder. The fact that the logo features a blood-stained moebius-strip should be a big giveaway. Split into several story arcs, each one has Keichi and his gal pals hanging out all happy until one of them starts getting crazy as the festival approaches and we all just wait for the gory climax. Then the show magically hits a reset button and on it goes again, with characters seeming to remember things in ways that are otherwise impossible.
The characterization is fairly standard visual novel stuff. Generally, we have the central protagonist of the arc (usually Keichi) spout off voice-over narration as characters sit around and talk so much that its video game roots become clear: you can almost see the text boxes. Rena is a cutesy ditz with a twist. Shion is a spunky pseudo-Lum with a twist. Even the two Lolita characters prove to have darker sides, which become utterly ludicrous. It becomes nearly impossible to take this stuff too seriously as a character still speaks in cutesy polite Japanese while being viciously crucified and skewered.
Yet each time a disc ended, I wound up dutifully popping in the next one without so much as a pout. For all the hair-pulling moments of moe-pandering and outright stupidity, it remains a compelling little thriller that proves ultimately touching. As the story comes to a close, you find that, yes, there is a pot of cathartic gold at the end of the twisty rainbow and it’s oddly touching. In end, we find a bunch of broken people trying to find just a taste of redemption.
As a side note, a common litmus test for a show’s quality that I’ve quietly conducted has been to show my long-suffering girlfriend something I’m reviewing or just an old favorite. Just to show her taste here’s how it breaks down:
Serial Experiments Lain: “Hey, you know that show you showed me yesterday? Let’s watch more of it.”
Kamen Rider Kabuto GODSPEEDLOVE: “Uhh...yeah. That was kinda nice. Why does everyone look gay?”
School Rumble: [Inaudible due to raucous laughter]
Slayers: “Hey! I remember this show when I was little girl! Lina was the coolest!” [Followed by dead sleep 15 minutes into episode 1]
In this case, it was a mixture of verbal face-palming and quiet eye-rolling at the obnoxious characters. Followed by wide-eyed shock when they were inevitably made into a meaty mess by a baseball bat. Then laughing some more at the excess.
The next day I got a phone call: “You know what? I just had a nightmare with that high school girl laughing hysterically.”
Overall Rating: B-
Review by: Fernando Ramos
Director: Chiaki Kon
Animation Production: Studio DEEN
Distributed by: FUNimation
