Ryukishi07 megathread / griefing thread - Higurashi, Umineko, Ciconia, etc.

[306h4Ge5eJUJ]

I don't see how that should interfere with a War Bad story, if anything shouldn't there be an uptick of War Bad stories during these kinds of periods?

At the risk of politisperging, generic "war bad" is mostly associated with Russia sympathizers right now. No idea whether these kinds of political fault lines translate to the Japanese though.

 

[worldend_dominator]

This is something I think about sometimes

Spoiler: trannyneko ch. 1-4

Man, if I was Maria, survived and grew up I would be so fucking mad.
>mfw the schizo culprit who got my family killed was right under my nose
>mfw she groomed my autistic 6 year old ass into playing along with her delusions
>mfw that mini-cult leader didn't even believe in the things she promised me (she just wanted to make Battora-kun suffer)
>mfw she taught me all these westoid occult things which made me even more offputting and gave me similar revenge fantasies to her
>mfw my autism had me see her as a different person, my memories from back then are hazy as is
>mfw she turned me into her creepy, inconditional accomplice for the murders like the servants
>or at the very least, she wrote me as her creepy, inconditional accomplice
>mfw she showed her "love" to me by leaving me for last
>mfw best case scenario for me was death by Jonestown punch (someone else wrote this but still)
>mfw SHE PENNED THE MURDER PLAN/FANFIC CHAPTERS UNDER MY NAME

The tranny shills don't see this as grooming (god knows they're doing similar things on discord), but as something to ignore, or something good, to cheer on, to make memes almost glorifying. Part of it must be because it provides a escape of sorts from her life and Rosa's flawed parenting, but two wrongs don't make one right.

Sure, Alice, tell me how this is based but also George is literally grooming his bride.

 

[Unhindered Clown]

This is something I think about sometimes

Spoiler: trannyneko ch. 1-4

Man, if I was Maria, survived and grew up I would be so fucking mad.
>mfw the schizo culprit who got my family killed was right under my nose
>mfw she groomed my autistic 6 year old ass into playing along with her delusions
>mfw that mini-cult leader didn't even believe in the things she promised me (she just wanted to make Battora-kun suffer)
>mfw she taught me all these westoid occult things which made me even more offputting and gave me similar revenge fantasies to her
>mfw my autism had me see her as a different person, my memories from back then are hazy as is
>mfw she turned me into her creepy, inconditional accomplice for the murders like the servants
>or at the very least, she wrote me as her creepy, inconditional accomplice
>mfw she showed her "love" to me by leaving me for last
>mfw best case scenario for me was death by Jonestown punch (someone else wrote this but still)
>mfw SHE PENNED THE MURDER PLAN/FANFIC CHAPTERS UNDER MY NAME
View attachment 7966554

Spoiler: Reply to spoiler

I would unironically read an AU where Maria survived all this. She'd come after this game with pure unfettered hatred in her heart and it would be incredibly based.

Maybe she'd attempt to kill herself down the line but have some kind of realization and decide that she would live out of pure spite. Now that is a villain origin story I'd certainly read.

 

[worldend_dominator]

Spoiler: Reply to spoiler

I would unironically read an AU where Maria survived all this. She'd come after this game with pure unfettered hatred in her heart and it would be incredibly based.

Maybe she'd attempt to kill herself down the line but have some kind of realization and decide that she would live out of pure spite. Now that is a villain origin story I'd certainly read.

Now you got my gears turning. The thing too is it would be too based for Hackishi and his backwards morality. If he was in charge it would be a short story where

Spoiler: general umi spoilers

the mentality you mentioned for Maria would be le bad and she, like Battler and Ange, would learn to love Beatrice and cover up for her a.k.a. going back to square one.
As it stands, as she was killed at 9 years of age (not 6, my bad), she's developmentally frozen in time. She's known as the mastermind's messenger and fellow witch, and in that state she's used to show Ange magic is... le good, torture Rosa like a stress relief toy (like EVA-Beatrice), make more creepy faces, and create a nicer projection of Rosa. Oh, and to get into a petty squabble with Erika, because seeking release by uncovering the culprit's LARP is literally telling a kid Santa Claus is not real, you heartless chud.
Even in the much needed apology segment added in the Ch. 8 manga she's like "uuuuuu don't insult lady beatoriche", I just got a bit upset remembering it.

In addition to the grief and your life drastically changing for the worse, there's an extra element of having been personally manipulated by the witch, not even registering in her mind and her actual goal, and her memories would be blurry enough for the game to take place. This AU would have to acknowledge the sheer extent of the vileness Ryukishi's pet Yasuda engages in (a huge no-no for him, this is one of the reasons he wants you to not think about Jessica). What good would her love platitudes do now to someone who believed in her, in more ways than one, and was let down in the worst of ways?
She could also, as a young adult, have a personal retrospective on her relationship with Mama. There's so much fanfic potential.

Now I also remembered

Spoiler: higurashi ch.6

the anime added Adult Rena to the chapter's ending. So Keiichi not only saved her soul, but incidentally, her body as well. Her looking back, and maybe linking up with Ooishi and Akasaka too, would make for a bittersweet (more so bitter but still) fragment.

 

[Unhindered Clown]

Ryukishi wouldn't allow it due to how evil and based it is

Spoiler: General umi spoilers and my tism

Genuinely it would've been so over for Battler and Beato if Maria were allowed to survive. certain things would make for a really thrilling twist of villainy.

• Bernkastel gets to more explicitly the stand-in Witch Form of Adult Survivor Maria, who looks at the catbox without any love at all. Her vengeful side would line up really well with Adult Maria's feeling of betrayal
• Featherine and Bernkastel have a complicated relationship that can certainly work as a fantasy stand-in to interrogate the different sides of Rosa she saw as a kid
• It makes the Erika and Maria fight feel like beating her old self up for not seeing the tricks and fantasy for what it really was
• The only question would be if Eva was alive and came back with Maria, Ange could've been ended up raised by the Sumadera family. Alternatively, Maria is the sole survivor and didn't remember enough to say whodunnit. Because she can't, or maybe it was supressed by the trauma so Ange and her become estranged cousins until 1998 when neither one can stand the unanswered questions anymore
• Maria's grimoire would probably remain in her possession as a memento of the diary entries with her mother. And also, because she is terrified of forgetting that period too. But she probably would tear out all the magic pages written in it.
• Would Ange still use magic to cope with Saint Hell without the grimoire? Or would she just snap like Keiichi and Rena did when they were going through it at school?
• Up until the very late answer arc portions Ange was fully intending on opening that book until Battler Tsukuyomi'd her into coping through the depressing reality of her fucked up family and not opening it. Battler probably wouldn't be able to change her mind if 9-year-old Maria gets slam dunked by her older self colluding with the evil version of her cousin in Fantasy Land. He ultimately left the choice up to her but only after the fact when Bern pointed out how manipulative it was for him to hide things under a cutesy facade.
• I'm not sure if Adult Maria showing the truth would lead Ange to suicide anyway or being extremely depressed that a schizo killed nearly her whole family because Battler said something gay as a kid and they took it the wrong way, so they went full postal the year he returned. The fandom would call it the Doomer Ending but I think it would be a Neutral Ending. Kinda like the manga ending but without the tulpa family there to make things seem a little more optimistic.
• Ange would still get the better end of the deal since she wasn't manipulated by Beato as a child.
• Definitely later scenes of Rosa and Adult Maria/Bernkastel alone would be great to write. I always thought their dialogue in the Golden Fantasia storymode was an interesting character interaction.

I feel mildly insane thinking this much about it but there's truly so much untread ground. Stockholm Syndrome!Battler and Beato would lose so hard in this scenario. As far as I know Bern doesn't represent a specific person in Umi, just a philosophy but with an AU like this her antagonism gets a new layer of impact.

 

[worldend_dominator]

-reply to spoiler-

fuuuuuuuuuck i knowww. you ever see something so bad but all the pieces are right there to make it better?

Spoiler: elaborating on your list

Unlike the average mystery autist, I liked the future plotline for the most part.

• Maria's dad hears about the news and returns to Japan. The cynical but easy assumption is he came back for the money. He tries but is not good at this parenting thing either, not abusive, just doing the minimum. This also shatters her immaculate conception cope.
• Maria is both feared and bullied relentlessly ("NOOOOO SHE'S GONNA CURSE AND KILL ME", "YOU WANTED ALL TO DIE, DIDN'T YOU", "WHY IS YOUR NAME IN THIS", "YOU AND YOUR MOM DID IT"), her first instinct is to cry for Beato's help which just makes things worse. The ripping of the bandaid begins.
• While Eva the tiger mom sent Ange to St. Lucia, Maria has to go from one normie school to the next. Ange would just attack her bullies personally and get punished in return.
• "What did you think going to the golden land meant?" Did her escapism translate into a death wish at such a young age without realizing?
• Oh she absolutely rips her book's pages apart ...except for Sakutaro's and the Chiesters', those were joint creations with Mama after all.
• They both are stranged, only seeing each other a couple of times, but reunite, older and more autonomous, in 1998, this secretly starts as a suicide pact.
• You know how the possibility of Kyrie and Rudolf being the true culprits behind the massacre is bad enough to drive Ange to suicide? That's Maria's everyday reality. The Rosa culprit theory is popular. Her black witch comes to take the form of ROSA-Beatrice.
• The investigation process is a painful reminder of her past general personality, everything she lost, and the fact she was meant to be a sacrifice too.
• Most of the meta world is Ange thinking to herself. She's the one portraying siding with the mastermind as good, having Battler love Beato and pretending to be mad about it. Having someone else to bounce off would make the story more nuanced instead of black and white. It takes two to create a universe, as they say.
• While investigating, Maria finds (or creates) forgeries featuring meta-Rosa as the detective, given her smarts and vehement opposition to magic. While representing Maria, she has zero patience for tricks and focuses on the end result right away. There's a dichotomy with the real possibility of her being an accomplice a la Black Battler.
• Beatrice teases Maria and summons her younger self. She's not happy about it one bit.
• The petty fight with Erika takes that lens, yeah.
• The voyager witches represent in and out-of-universe readers, right? They come to represent the remaining cousins too. Ange is a bit more lenient and has more love, needed to understand the texts, Maria on her own would be blocked.

I'm not even opposing the official trannythink answer, just everything else surrounding it. I also want to make other characters more involved, shuffling events to keep it fresh, and echoing some sentiments found ITT, have the characters act like humans, instead of how the author wants humans to act.

writing this is what i should be using the keyboard for instead of typing essays on green reddit

 

[Unhindered Clown]

Holy shit these are such good ideas, if you ever get around to fleshing these out as short entries or a full-fledged fanfic I'd sure as shit read them on here. Even if you didn't this brings me much enjoyment just to have food for thought.

Spoiler: Not to mention

Rosatrice theory is pretty hated from what I've seen in the last handful of years but your idea gives her such great utility taking full advantage of the Metaworld/Fantasy aspect tormenting her as The Black Witch.

One can dream.

Makes me wonder what his new project will be now that Silent Hill f is out? Ciconia will probably still collect dust. I'm burnt out on Higurashi content and am waiting for Oni to finish, but apparently there is a new WTCish manga called Koppa Mai Chiru Sono Koro Ni / when the Splinters Scatter? I didn't notice until I checked the scanlation group's page.

 

[Trombonista]

This now exists and I hate it.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

This now exists and I hate it.

They just will not have normal figures of these characters, there's so few non-fanservice ones. Big Bad Toystore has a few of them: two are Hanyuu having either cream puffs or with Onigari-no-Ryuo like normal, two are Rika and Rena in their school bathing suits, and the other Hanyuu figure is wearing negligee and bunny ears.

I just really hate the chipmunk Gou look, so I can't bring myself to get the cream puff-wielding Hanyuu.

 

[The Lawgiver]

This now exists and I hate it.

There's so many fucking factors going on here. The combo of the insanely high price for a static pvc figurine, something that years ago would be a crane game prize or some shit for like 20-30 dollars, the fact it's not even visually the character save for the hair and death glare, the fact she's apperently happy and waving while covered in blood (shit she never fucking did) shit keeps piling up.

They just will not have normal figures of these characters, there's so few non-fanservice ones. Big Bad Toystore has a few of them: two are Hanyuu having either cream puffs or with Onigari-no-Ryuo like normal, two are Rika and Rena in their school bathing suits, and the other Hanyuu figure is wearing negligee and bunny ears.

I just really hate the chipmunk Gou look, so I can't bring myself to get the cream puff-wielding Hanyuu.

When my friend (well prior friend now long yet short story tied to my status) Got me to go through the entirety of higurashi during corona times it was unfortunately around the same time a lot of shit started getting scalped on ebay, including the $10 really accurate blind box figures from over a decade back now based on the original character sprites. There was like one sane listing I missed for a 2 pack that wasnt blind boxed and had alternate parts for the blind box ones at like $30 new in box and I'm still kinda pissed I never got it. In fact I'm genuinely pissed with the recent shit they didn't just reissue the things again and make figures for the other characters but that's a whole other story.

 

[worldend_dominator]

This now exists and I hate it.

secondary garbage, my girl deserves better

Holy shit these are such good ideas, if you ever get around to fleshing these out as short entries or a full-fledged fanfic I'd sure as shit read them on here. Even if you didn't this brings me much enjoyment just to have food for thought.

Thanks for the inspiration, don't expect it any time soon but i have the plot all sketched out and stuff now

Rosatrice theory is pretty hated from what I've seen in the last handful of years

Speaking of which, I recently watched the whole 9 hours of KnowNoMore's Rosatrice defense and...

I fucking kneel.
The whole thing is now a fascinating time capsule of the average western Umineko fan circa 2010 or so (extreme mystery autism obsessing over every single meme room and line in red, everything else takes second stage, very clearly hasn't read (or at the time, watched) Higurashi, believes Ryukishi can do no wrong), some of these attitudes have stayed alive on /v/ since then.

The bad: KNM copes with the official nonsense by claiming it's a deception (he believes R07 was lying years after the fact, unironically loveless) and that it twists the red and relies on semantics (even though finding second meanings is a core mechanic and dozens of hours are wasted arguing over semantics). He sources interviews to support his point while obviously lacking critical context behind Ryu's emotional and mental state (like really, he gives far too much credit to a doujin otaku writer who dabbled on postmodernism as a crutch for criticism and was later depressed over a close friend's death, so much so he ends up indirecly insulting dragonknight). He disregards the manga while using the botched anime as reference. The culprit's main motive requires MASSIVE stretches of logic to fit with what we're shown, say what you will about the official one but at least it was straightforward.

The good: her other motives, and those of the other culprits/accomplices, make perfect sense, the heart isn't neglected. The tricks are more intuitive while not being completely easy to decipher. He accuses the same 3 people for every game, which is more standard for murder mysteries and more elegant than "lmao anyone can be bribed". His solution takes both the red truth AND Willard's answers into account. His dissatisfaction with the official answer just emboldened his faith on (his idealization of) the author, so he never stopped thinking. Even back then, he was attacked by the cult and that didn't stop him.
So mad respect. Regardless of your stance on the idea, it deserves to be watched.

Spoiler: also

If Rosa and George were the culprits then umitrannies would like them. OK, maybe not George still. Male? Confessing to having an incel-adjacent mentality in the past? AND no active tension with some other male character to make yaoi with? He NEVER stood a chance in western fandom. Literally worse than catfishing and mass murder.

 

[HexFag]

Speaking of which, I recently watched the whole 9 hours of KnowNoMore's Rosatrice defense and...

I posted this on this site about half a decade ago and I'm sure there are people who haven't seen it in the time since the guy who used to spam this is long gone from /jp/, and the wider WTC community, but I absolutely invite everyone who has read Umineko to read the Erikantrice manifesto made by Italian_anon if you have not. It's the greatest accomplishment in ESL engineering of all time. It's 68 pages of pure fucking nonsense and the guy would insist for YEARS that he had basically "solved Umineko" in every /a/, /v/, and /jp/ thread and completely derail every single one by sheer numbers. I've attached it to this post as well as sent the public link here.

This now exists and I hate it.

I think they really should rerun the Collect700 figs that they had running from about 20 years ago. I think it's kind of a missed opportunity that they never decided to capitalize on Ryukishi's unique designs and made figures based off those but I guess the horny figs probably make an assload more money. I still wish we got proper Umineko merch other than those god awful ugly-as-sin dolls because an Erika fig or a proper Beato fig would be perfect. I've seen small Nitro+ eroge get more merch then that damn VN.

Also searching on buyee and ebay for these figs are fucking impossible I've only ever managed to get Rena and that was on a very good deal about 3-4 years ago. Good luck to those trying to find these.

 

[The Lawgiver]

I think they really should rerun the Collect700 figs that they had running from about 20 years ago. I think it's kind of a missed opportunity that they never decided to capitalize on Ryukishi's unique designs and made figures based off those but I guess the horny figs probably make an assload more money. I still wish we got proper Umineko merch other than those god awful ugly-as-sin dolls because an Erika fig or a proper Beato fig would be perfect. I've seen small Nitro+ eroge get more merch then that damn VN.

Also searching on buyee and ebay for these figs are fucking impossible I've only ever managed to get Rena and that was on a very good deal about 3-4 years ago. Good luck to those trying to find these.

These are the ones I was talking about. It's not that they're actually hard to find, it's that at some point after 2020 happened "value speculators" that have been hoarding fucking everything did their thing with them and scraped up all sane listings to then relist at $500+ The figures had a few reruns over the years being blind box figs IIRC.

The fact they never did a wave 2 of these things with keichi is a fucking crime. Like I know the exact fucking characters that'd have likely been done and it's just like the other main cast guys they missed.

 

[worldend_dominator]

I posted this on this site about half a decade ago and I'm sure there are people who haven't seen it in the time since the guy who used to spam this is long gone from /jp/, and the wider WTC community, but I absolutely invite everyone who has read Umineko to read the Erikantrice manifesto made by Italian_anon if you have not. It's the greatest accomplishment in ESL engineering of all time.

lmao this guy, I never got around reading his full ramblings but even before finishing the game I could tell, he was a riot. That single scene in Ch. 6 mindbroke him.
>READ HERE THE REAL TRUTH OF UMINEKO ERIKANTRIC-ACK

The fact they never did a wave 2 of these things with keichi is a fucking crime. Like I know the exact fucking characters that'd have likely been done and it's just like the other main cast guys they missed.

They're sitting on money makers and have no idea. The Higurashi art style is all the rage these days, not just just among fans, but between Sonico pinterest denpa animecore posers too (see how well the Saya fumo sold).

Umi merch too, tranny cultists would physically line up for Beatrice and Lambdadelta figs. In fact,

Spoiler: wordswordswords on Umineko's total western dominance and its horrendous fanbase

15 years after ending, Umineko still has an iron grip on the west, meaning not just the larger VN community (see how normies and trannies have been brigading vndb so umi gets 1st place, looking for examples i found many of them, particularly the Fata Morgana and Ace Attorney fans, don't know what a higurashi is, also everytime DR2 is rated higher than THH, which is all the time, i want to shoot myself mysteryturbospergs should be beaten with hammers),

Spoiler: a large sample of uninterrupted walls of 10/10s

but even married normalfags, their elderly parents, and pretentious philosophists (ironic weebs seek validation from all these people) who treat it as one the literary greats because it's metafictional, uses smart-sounding words and namedrops philosophical concepts much like critical darling SubaHibi. Hey, did you know Umineko is based on Sonichu Dante's Inferno?

(this is a joke video about My Immortal and the comments are all umitrannies, other videos of his include "Final Fantasy XIV", "Puella Magi Madoka Magica", "Persona (3-5)", "Hegelian Dialect", and "Transexuality", I'll let you draw your own conclusions.)

When westerners say When they cry or 07th Expansion (e.g.: how leftist it is), what they mean is Umineko. It dominates the 07th community while somehow simultaneously being detached from it. It has 2 separate full translations, Witch Hunt's coming relatively shortly after release and being acknowledged in Ch. 4, and 3 separate projects to port the PS3 assets to PC. Even with the release and speculation hype crashing and burning, it's a safe westaboo novel with a classic mystery setting, adults with business troubles are important at first, it's not ew cringe anime like higu, it's meta, it has prestige and liking it makes you seem smart even if you just go along without thinking or questioning anything (no goat namecalling there!). Really, it's more entry level than its shills would have you believe. And ends up as many people's first in many ways: first story with relativist themes, first metafictional story, first mystery story, first twisted love story, first visual novel, first japanese media. No wonder they believe umi is the best thing ever, compare it to everything, apply its autistic rules and expectations to more traditional mysteries, conclude nothing could ever possibly come close, and re-read it again and again roping more people in. (Warning: contains spoilers to Danganronpa 1's 4th chapter)

(this is also how italianon "solved" Higurashi btw, i've seen that much)
But there's one more, very important factor here, that post current year, thanks to Ryu's personal state at the time, it happens to validate the dominant ideology of the past decade: anything can mean anything, self-id is valid, you are a different person if you say so depending of how you feel at a time of the day as backed by the absolute truth, even if you know what's happening playing pretend forever in service of shitty people is what Good people do, everything is subjective, truth is personal and everyone's is valid except for your Evil truth, mean words and discussing crimes are violence and worse than commiting them, you're supposed to self-flagellate and grovel before the feet of said self-iding shitty people even as they ruin your life because YOU made them sad (she only thinks about herself), and just navelgazing, victim blaming, DARVO in general.
[>inb4 mindbroken. No, seeing the novel on a vacuum doesn't make everything mentioned here beautiful or correct. If you see it that way then it's safe to consider you the enemy.]
And it encourages cult thinking with its strawmen of critics, and self-defensive buzzwords like "goat" (referring to the Ep. 8 ones, but it's projection, look up the original profile of the Goatmen) and "without love, it cannot be seen" ("it" means the truth, but they just print this phrase around like NPCs when anyone says anything even slightly negative about their bible). THIS is why trannies shill it so fervently, and is also how we get redditroons saying the game is based because it's "about a transgirl killing the rich" even though she's both a woman and the richest person in there (again, no goat accusations there!).

Ryu has always had a "love the sinner" savior complex (Meakashi is umitrannies' favorite higu chapter for a reason), but even then you could understand and get behind it, he had more restraint, it was within human limits. See also Miyoko's backstory, it goes from a cartoonishly tragic childhood to one of the most peak segments in the entire VN. Back then, he had an editor and he was alive. Then BT died, everyone kept being a callous critic as if nothing happened, and he got depressed and loved his sinners so much he ended up loving the sin. Battler carries water even for Kinzo, by acting as him and lending him his design, and has to be impossibly, suicidally good for the story to not fall apart.

Funnily enough, even with all this, right-leaning people, more often than not just dipping their toes into anime with westoid-friendly stuff like Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion and Berserk love it (shoutout to the rw wtc gc upthread LOL), and they're not just coping, self-inserting as Erika and saying Bernkastel is right while ignoring she's depicted as unambiguously evil, no, they love the main thing as is, they love Beatrice and Lord Battler (emphasis on Lord, before that everyone mocks him for... crying over being forced to see his and his family's death over and over), and use the same CGs for their socials as any other cultist. Correct, Sayo is a woman, so what? So are most gendies, and like them, she and the story are everything described above. It reminds me of this subset of rightists who defend the honor of young white anglo women (the biggest proponents of cultural marxism on the ground) and think they're beyond reproach because they're "aryan" and call you brown and jewish if you point this out.
The imageboards' critique in general is low IQ
>reeeeee he didn't spell out the answer
>durrrr beatrice is a tranny (meaning MtF, FtMs and women in general don't exist to channers)
and so is the defense in return
<yeah he didn't despite clearly hinting towards it so... come up with your own! so we can call you a goat! just keep discussing the game with us forever please
<actually she's a woman so the game is based chudcore and not troonslop in spite of everything else
they also say <ummm it's actually a love story, chud after shilling it to you as a mystery game when you call out its shortcomings in that front

oh, and norwood 4chan oldtroons and their pretenders praise it because 10 people on /jp/ discussed it on release and made memes nobody remembers so it gives them oldfag cred, and they spent 150 hours on it so it must be good, right? (Misery loves company). And JUST when you think the grip is loosening, massive normie magnets like Cellbit a.k.a. “Brazilian Battler” (who came out as asexual to twitter's applause when hit with a sexual abuse allegation as a way to assure his "no actually I was molested as a child" defense btw) and Joseph Anderson give it a THIRD wind.

To wrap this up, what many western shills who treat umineko as its own standalone thing miss is that it was made with higurashi readers in mind. Many elements like the bigger focus on and amount of mysteries, the non-interactive Ace Attorney-like truth system, and characters representing ancient rulesets nobody has followed to the letter in centuries (and that he skirts around with technicalities anyway, but he's trying to show he cares), are direct responses to higu readers' criticism, those rules were brought up to Ryu by some of them. And he did not take it well, there are some eye-rolling parts in umi where he shits on higu as if he was ashamed of his previous work and wants to show how much better this one is (Kodaka did the same thing in SDR2, shitting on DR1 as if 2 wasn't a panderfest worse in every way except for the harder cases, I'm begging JP writers to be more confident).
I'm thinking people were too harsh on the guy, there's room for critique, specially today when his flaws are more apparent, he's certainly not above milking, for example, but some /v/tards are so cynical they claim R07 fell off because BT was his ghost writer. Ryu just wanted to tell a story about injustices and trust, and horror and murder mystery are effective tools to draw people in and and encourage analysis, discussion and ultimately, connection with the characters, not the other way around.

And all this is not to say I hate or take issue with every trait mentioned, or that they're inherently bad, but their appeal to Western Audiences, specially when combined, is undeniable.
TL;DR If more normaltroons were filtered by the groping Battler scenes the world would be a better place. Also, be more tactful, focus on what's important and see the full picture before giving your comments.

 

[The Lawgiver]

many of them, particularly the Fata Morgana and Ace Attorney fans, don't know what a higurashi is,

That's stupid! They directly reference higurashi a number of times in umineko and carry over some of the meta-multiverse timeline bullshit mechanics from it. Yes I know the post also brings that up somewhat but it's still important to emphasize just how shit that is.

...Of course, this IS current year eternal we're talking about, so it makes complete and total sense, as shameful as it is. This is a time where a ton of people can't just go into something they see that looks interesting, they actively watch 5 hour long "spoiler free" video essays that spoil important plot points and impart pre-baked opinions into them about how everything is somehow secretly about being trans, gay, or sexist and racist. Sometimes all four!

I should probably point this out once again, but I have not finished Umineko, and I don't know if I ever will. Not due to lack of wanting, but rather due to not having the right kind of computer setup to do a lot of things at this moment. That, and the person who was showing me it the last few years during our free time suddenly and wordlessly backstabbing me at the beginning of this year. I was somewhat of a good ways in, too. Still, Sometime afterwards I was unintentionally spoiled of extremely important bits we hadn't gotten to yet not via even anything remotely close to something that could have been knowingly sought for or avoided. I didn't bother saying anything about it to the person that out of nowhere in a completely unrelated situation bring up important plot details and character reveals, but it really added to a growing feeling I've felt the last few years about my own luck and how shit lines up both for and against me in ways that results in nothing but stagnation and stress.

Anyways, I'll be cutting things off here before I go off onto an unrelated tangent that'll likely result in some form of powerlevelling. I'll just put this important fact as a TL;DR : I'm really not in the mood to go through an entire story alone I was going through with friends to get to the spot I was at before things fell apart out of nowhere.

 

[HexFag]

15 years after ending, Umineko still has an iron grip on the west, meaning not just the larger VN community (see how normies and trannies have been brigading vndb so umi gets 1st place, looking for examples i found many of them, particularly the Fata Morgana and Ace Attorney fans, don't know what a higurashi is, also everytime DR2 is rated higher than THH, which is all the time, i want to shoot myself mysteryturbospergs should be beaten with hammers),

I will say that VNDB score autism has ALWAYS been there and will ALWAYS continue to be there. The site, now more than ever, is overrun with contrarians. There is absolutely no reason why the top VN on a primarily ENGLISH website should be Rance X. I know it's a masterpiece apparently, but I can promise you that there aren't enough JOPs on that site to constitute it being the #1 rated VN score of all time, some niggas just lower the score of other high ranking VNs for tribal autism reasons. You could argue that it's Umitrannies or Subahibiniggers or Muramasafags or whatever all day, I don't give a fuck. Umineko used to be even HIGHER in ranking on VNDB. I remember it being third when I had finished reading it 5 years ago with about 4k votes and now the vote count is doubled and then some and it's even lower in ranking then beforehand. Currently it's in the top 5. At the end of the day it really doesn't matter. Muv-Luv Alternative was the #1 VN for YEARS and I've seen more people bounce off Extra than any other VN ever.

I will say as a "relatively older fan" of Umineko, it's been a real trip seeing public perception of the VN change over time as well as the new fans that have come in. I think the biggest thing that rattled me were the people who read Umineko seemingly without any interest in reading or even watching Higurashi. I saw the wider fanbase hating the shit out of George coming, I saw all of the other shit coming, but I at least thought people would put on Deengurashi just to see what the guy did. I think some Umineko-onlies see Higurashi as homework for understanding Umineko when it's a fantastic work on it's own. Also Tsumihoroboshi-hen is one of the best things Ryukishi has ever written and it's a crime that people are just skipping it over because people have talked about Umineko more.

I still think the most obnoxious thing about Umineko-only fans is the fact that they seemingly will not read any other VNs other than Umineko. Don't get me wrong, I adore Umineko and it is undoubtedly my favorite VN of all time, but I think it's dumb that you won't even give anything else in the medium another chance just because Umineko exists. It's like those people who really like Eva or TTGL who won't bother to watch another mecha anime.

At the end of the day I don't really give a fuck about Umi-only fans or how annoying they are online, caring about fanbases is gay imo. I do feel bad for anybody who uses Twitter reading Umi for the first time because there is a good chance they can have their first readthrough ruined by some sperg online.

I should probably point this out once again, but I have not finished Umineko, and I don't know if I ever will. Not due to lack of wanting, but rather due to not having the right kind of computer setup to do a lot of things at this moment. That, and the person who was showing me it the last few years during our free time suddenly and wordlessly backstabbing me at the beginning of this year. I was somewhat of a good ways in, too. Still, Sometime afterwards I was unintentionally spoiled of extremely important bits we hadn't gotten to yet not via even anything remotely close to something that could have been knowingly sought for or avoided. I didn't bother saying anything about it to the person that out of nowhere in a completely unrelated situation bring up important plot details and character reveals, but it really added to a growing feeling I've felt the last few years about my own luck and how shit lines up both for and against me in ways that results in nothing but stagnation and stress.

I still think you should try a bit to finish it because even when spoiled on large details, Umineko is still a good time to read. There's a lot that can be noticed when rereading Umineko and when I was reading it with a friend I was having more fun reading it again than on my first time at some parts.

In other news I finally started reading Higanbana. The first chapter is ridiculously dark but it's pretty enjoyable so far. The soundtrack isn't nearly as bombastic but it very much fits the tone of the story.

 

[Unhindered Clown]

I think some Umineko-onlies see Higurashi as homework for understanding Umineko when it's a fantastic work on its own.

That's because they do and their turbo autism doesn't really let them consume any other 07th work unless they can stick a pin in it and trace it back to Umi (it is also probably the main reason they read Ciconia). Hell, even normal anime watchers still get readily confused about Gou not actually being a modernized adaptation and it's been 4 years since ending.

man, you think you know the fandom history after being around long enough but this rabbithole runs really fucking deep. Umi Oldheads should drop more fandom lore for nosy fucks like me.

 

[Federal Intelligence]

I saw the wider fanbase hating the shit out of George coming

Spoiler: Umineko spoiler

They hate the guy that isn't a pedophile more than the guy that fucked his daughter.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Found at random lol.

 

[The Lawgiver]

Found at random lol.
YTDown.com_YouTube_Satoko-s-Chandelier-Trap-Higurashi-Gou_Media_TdvT6IrGAyE_001_1080p.mp4

It's parody level ridiculous how out of character they had to make everything just to warp the autist with an abusive uncle into "THA REAL MASTERMIND WHO GOT TIME TRAVEL POWERS FROM CHARACTER THAT LOOKS LIKE CHARACTER FROM OTHER THING" I know it's been said before but there's no excuse not to keep fucking pointing it out.