Trabia Garden

Just watched the first four episodes of the new Higurashi anime! I wasn't sure about the art style at first; Keiichi in particular looks too young to me. The character designs aren't as distracting as I thought they might be, though, and the scenery looks lovely.

It's nowhere near as terrifying as the visual novel, but I suppose that's to be expected. An anime can't really give the same depth of immersion in Keiichi's perspective, and a lot of the horror in the visual novel is created in the reader's imagination; how do you compete against that when you actually have to show these events on the screen?

The presentation may not be perfect, but these doomed kids? These kids are perfect and I love them.


( Spoilers up to episode four of the 2020 Higurashi anime. )


I don't feel the new anime really captures the Higurashi atmosphere, unfortunately, but it feels really good to come back to this universe and I'm interested to see where it's going! Higurashi is a great source of both intense friendship and intense suffering; if we get more of that, I'll be happy. Keiichi cried, and that's a thumbs-up from me.

I've finished Matsuribayashi, the final instalment of Higurashi: When They Cry! Here are my thoughts on the second half.


( Notes on Higurashi: Matsuribayashi, up to the end. )


'If you enjoyed yourself, you won,' the message from the creator says at the end. I suppose I won Higurashi!

I think, taken as a complete work, Umineko had a stronger impact on me than Higurashi - I had some very intense and weird emotions over Umineko - but I'm fonder of the Higurashi characters, and Tsumihoroboshi (the sixth Higurashi visual novel) is my favourite instalment in the entire When They Cry universe.

I've been vaguely wondering whether to do a reflection on some of the media that most stuck with me in the 2010s, and then owlmoose made an entry along those lines, which finally nudged me into actually getting it done. In alphabetical order, here are ten canons from the decade that I think I'm going to remember.

Note: this is media that I first experienced in the 2010s, rather than necessarily being media that was originally released in the 2010s. Community, Uncharted, Higurashi and Umineko technically originated in the decade before.


1. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy. This one crept right under the wire for me. My mum received this book for Christmas this year. I'd never heard of it, but I opened it at a few random pages and genuinely started crying because it was so beautiful. It's sort of philosophical whimsy in the vein of Winnie-the-Pooh or The Little Prince, it's gorgeously illustrated, and I'd recommend it without hesitation if you enjoy those books. I was really surprised by how deeply it affected me. Friendship!




2. Community. Community didn't manage to keep up the same level of quality throughout its run, alas; it's definitely stronger at the beginning than it is by the end. But the beginning is so strong. I've said this before, but the first series of Community is the best series of television I've ever watched. Almost perfectly crafted. It's so funny, it's got so much heart, and the characters are delightful. (Well, apart from Pierce.)

3. Danganronpa series. The series that kicked off my collection of weird videogames about murder. An interesting twist on the murder mystery genre: rather than bringing the 'detective' in after the murder occurs, it lets you get to know all the killers and victims well before the murders actually start happening. And then you're emotionally invested in all of them, and it's terrible! But also it's great. Interesting mysteries; fun characters; weird, irreverent, comedic tone that keeps things from getting too dark, but still gives events enough emotional weight for them to feel like they matter. I crowed with laughter at the end of Danganronpa V3 because I was so delighted by the weird plot twists.

4. Final Fantasy XV. This game's a mess. The pacing's catastrophic. But it's heartfelt and gorgeous and fun to play, and it's got so many charming details, and at its core it's a story of intense friendship that I can't resist. I got so happily lost in this game. I've written so much fanfiction. I love these boys so much.

5. Higurashi: When They Cry (visual novels), instalment six: Tsumihoroboshi. I've played seven instalments of Higurashi and I enjoy the series a lot, but Tsumihoroboshi in particular is perfect. An incredible story about the power of friendship and the power of murder and the strange ways they intersect. Guilt! Paranoia! Being haunted by things you did in time loops you can't remember! Dramatic friendship speeches before hiding corpses together! Triumphant scenes of two friends fighting to the death and having a great time doing it! It's a bizarre, cathartic delight of a visual novel and I absolutely loved it.

6. The Last of Us. I remember my first encounter with this game: I watched th_esaurus play through the opening, and I was so tense it physically hurt. An absorbing, incredibly done story of learning to care again after loss. Wonderful performances, great writing, fascinating worldbuilding. Ellie is one of my favourite characters of all time, and I'm both excited and nervous to see her again in Part II.

7. Life Is Strange 2. I love sibling relationships, I love stories about two people against the world, I love people suddenly being ripped out of their normal lives and thrown into overwhelming situations. I loved every moment I spent playing as Sean Diaz, this wary, sarcastic, loving, vulnerable kid, watching him struggle and suffer and push through that for the sake of his brother. He has no idea what he's doing, but he's trying so hard to do right by Daniel. I sobbed my heart out when I finished the game; I hadn't cried so hard at a work of fiction in eight years. I was thinking solidly about it for a fortnight afterwards.

8. Umineko: When They Cry (the visual novel series, rather than the anime). Umineko is a murder mystery, and a story about how we create our own realities, and the strangest, most beautiful love story I've ever experienced. The pacing is wildly variable (I struggled to push through the slow opening on my first attempt and dropped it until I was persuaded to give it another go by, of all things, a Simpsons meme), but I really think Umineko is something special. I played it while I was recovering from a bit of a psychological collapse, and I was surprised and delighted to learn that fiction could still affect me so deeply. Its message about having hope in hopeless situations came to me at a time when I needed it, too.

9. Uncharted series. Even though the gameplay isn't necessarily my thing, I adore these games. The first one hadn't entirely found its feet, but then they established themselves as a gorgeous, fun series of shooty tourism simulators, where you run around and climb pretty buildings and listen to the characters bantering. As with Danganronpa or When They Cry, there's emotional weight, but the tone's also frequently a lot of fun. I love fictional suffering, but I can struggle when it's completely straight-faced all the time; it's good to be able to laugh as well.

10. Your Name. This is my favourite film in the entire world and crashes straight through my heart every time I watch it. I've never seen anything that impacts me quite like Your Name does. I'm always afraid to revisit it because I'm thinking 'what if I don't love it as much as I remember?'; I always end up loving it more. The most visually and emotionally beautiful film I've ever seen.


This is probably going to be my last entry before 2020, so a happy new year to you all! I'm glad we're all here.

I've just finished Minagoroshi, the seventh instalment of Higurashi: When They Cry! These notes were made as I played, so I'll occasionally ask questions that end up being answered later in the episode.


( Spoilers up to the end of Higurashi: Minagoroshi. )


The trouble with Higurashi is that episode six, Tsumihoroboshi, was everything I've ever wanted in a work of fiction, thus guaranteeing that the episodes following it would never match up. I didn't dislike this instalment, but I don't think it's a coincidence that I took a month to finish this one when I shot through Tsumihoroboshi in four days.

Over the weekend, my uncle told me the story of his application to Cardiff University. He got an interview, spoke to the interviewer for a while, and then the interviewer gave him a folded piece of paper and said, 'Could you take this to the professor down the hall?'

My uncle did so. The professor unfolded the piece of paper and read it. Looked at my uncle. Looked back at the paper.

My uncle could see the note from his vantage point. It said 'CANDIDATE IS ROARING DRUNK.'

He did not get a place.

(If you're wondering: yes, he absolutely was.)


I listened to the ending song of Umineko again and got SO EMOTIONAL about this stupid visual novel series. It's so beautiful and agonising and deeply, deeply weird. There's nothing else like it. It measurably changed my perspective; at one point it presented me with a question, and I went 'well, the answer is obviously this, but I'd have said the answer was obviously the opposite if I'd seen this question before playing this game.'

(The question, if you're curious, is this (it's best not to look if you're planning to play Umineko). It's got a very simple, very obvious answer, but which answer that is depends entirely on whether you've been through the journey that leads up to it.)

I'm sad that Umineko is in such an inaccessible medium and I can't get everyone I know into this odd thing. Everyone loves paying to read over a million words superimposed over dodgy art on their computer screens, right?

A part of me wants to try to write fanfiction, but I wouldn't know where to start. The canon's just too weird. And it gave me an OTP that's equal parts 'beautiful and romantic', 'juvenile and ridiculous' and 'colossally fucked-up'; it's hard to know how to strike the right balance there!

I'm still working my way through Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when I'm not immersing myself in the most murder-filled Japanese media I can find. Here are some notes on season three, from 'Lovers Walk' to 'Consequences'.

'Lovers Walk': Spike drunkenly pouring his heart out to Willow is great.

As with Angel, Spike is way less cool than I expected before I started watching this show. I love that all the brooding vampires are just huge losers.

'Amends' is full of top-quality Angel suffering and I love it. Weird sexual tension between him and his former victim as she tells him how worthless he is: also great!

I'm sad that Buffy didn't get her nice Christmas Eve with her mother and Faith, though.

'Helpless': Giles, you could have gone for a nice pseudo-father-daughter ice show with Buffy, instead of ruining her week!

I think Cordelia is probably my favourite character after Giles. I didn't know she existed before I started watching Buffy in earnest; she was such a fun surprise!

'The Zeppo': I would not have expected Xander/Faith, but, to be honest, Faith using Xander as a sex toy is sort of great.

And then Buffy and Faith are extremely girlfriends in the next episode.

Faith accidentally murdering a guy is fucked up and fascinating. I'm glad this show went back to explore that concept a little more, after the cop-out of 'Ted'.

The Faith/Xander scene in 'Consequences' was extremely fucked up and I was into it. Also pretty into the suggestion that Faith's gained a taste for murder.

I feel the entire second half of that episode was someone indulging the hell out of their kinks. Faith sexually threatening and attempting to strangle Xander. Faith in shackles. Angel being beaten and wrapped in a net. Buffy being dragged around by a ribbon around her throat. I haven't had such a strong 'wow, you really just put your fantasies right there on the screen, didn't you?' suspicion since the 'stripped, chained, used as a footstool and eaten alive' scene in Umineko.

Angel lurking in the background of every scene and looking serious is very funny.

After I first watched ERASED, back in 2016, I said I wasn't sure I'd ever watch it again. I really enjoyed it, but it was so intense I wasn't sure I'd be able to handle a rewatch.

I'm glad I came back to it. It is very intense, but it's also very good. And it's only twelve episodes, so it kicks you in the gut with DRAMA and EMOTIONS and then politely leaves to let you patch yourself up, rather than continually kicking you in the gut.

If I had to recommend an anime series to someone who'd never seen one before, I think ERASED would probably be the one I'd choose, with the caveat that it deals heavily with child abuse.

( Full-series spoilers for ERASED. )

I think ERASED has my favourite opening sequence of all time. Not just because of the part where the protagonist is clutching his head and writhing in emotional agony under a bridge, although that is very good.


I've been thinking fondly recently about Higurashi and how much I love watching Keiichi slowly losing his mind with terror. So I ordered the two-volume manga of the first arc (Onikakushi, called the Abducted by Demons arc in the manga).

I think this is the first time I've read a manga that's an adaptation, so I didn't entirely know what to expect. Fullmetal Alchemist, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Death Note, DN Angel, Full Moon o Sagashite, they were all manga to begin with. But Higurashi started out as a visual novel. Would the manga adaptation be good? Would it feel too compressed?

My reservations turned out to be unfounded. I enjoyed the Higurashi manga a lot! Even if it suffers slightly from going TITS TITS TITS too much before getting down to the business of psychologically pulling its characters apart. (The manga changes the early scene where Mion and Keiichi are playing 'hey, Keiichi, show me your dick' chicken to be about Mion's breasts instead! Outrageous.)

When the manga does start ripping Keiichi to shreds, it does it very effectively, although of course I can't say how it would have impacted me if I'd read the manga before the visual novel. In some ways the visual novel portrays the horror more effectively by having less to work with visually and more to work with in terms of sound, and by having more time to really dig into Keiichi's mind, but it was still really cool to see the characters having more expressions. And to see Keiichi's face!

(Keiichi's increasingly petrified, sleep-deprived, conflicted face. These poor kids.)

Reading the manga when I've played up to Tsumihoroboshi, and therefore have slightly more of an idea of what's going on, absolutely ripped me apart. Everything is agonising!

( Spoilers for the Onikakushi/Abducted by Demons arc of Higurashi: When They Cry. )

This has prodded me into beginning a replay of Higurashi. I'm doing some sprite editing this time around, though, because a few of the Steam sprites bother me; I wasn't a fan of Rena's embarrassed/anxious expression, for example, so I've changed it from this to this. I was going 'I wish I could play a version with a few of the sprites altered' and then 'wait, I have access to the game files! I have the power to do this!'

keltena has made me aware of the Umineko Gold project to create an English audiobook of Umineko, and I desperately need this to happen for two reasons.

Reason one (the practical one): a lot of people aren't into visual novels, so it'd be really cool to have Umineko available in a more accessible format.

Reason two (the horrible one): they've released a trailer for the audiobook, which contains Battler's breakdown at the first twilight of the first episode (running from around the nine-minute mark to 14min 30sec - the link should lead to the right point), and holy crap, his voice acting is perfect. I was a little unsure earlier in the extract, when I first heard his regular speaking voice, but I was sold the second things got fucked up. I'm very fond of Battler, which of course means my favourite parts of Umineko are the parts where he's completely psychologically collapsing. It's possible that I'm Beatrice. Jessica is great as well. (Warning: they're reacting to the aftermath of horrific murders - said aftermath is not actually displayed on the screen but is described in some detail.)

I'm just really excited to hear more of Battler sobbing and hyperventilating. Please let this happen.


I thought I might as well check out the demo for Zanki Zero: Last Beginning, the latest from Spike Chunsoft. (The bizarrely long demo. It took me four hours to complete. I was half-wondering whether they'd accidentally put the whole game in there.)

Pros:
- concept seems interesting
- apparently you can make the characters bang in any combination in optional side scenes, i.e. exactly what I want from every videogame
- the characters say 'ow' whenever I accidentally walk them into walls, which I do constantly, and it's pretty funny
- pleasingly guilt-ridden cast
- the line 'I can't breathe with all the blood in my throat'

Cons:
- I hate the gameplay! There is not a single aspect of the gameplay that appeals to me. I don't want to worry about every character's hunger and thirst and age and stamina and bladder capacity; those are concerns for real life!

This is a real problem with videogames. It's possible for a game to have a story and characters you're interested in, and yet be completely unbearable to play. I suppose the equivalent for a book would be 'I like this concept, but I can't stand the writing style.' Maybe I'll check out a Let's Play, but I really don't think I can play this myself.

(I wanted this entry's title to be the Peep Show quote 'Shakespeare basically said something about how there are more things there than there are actual things you can see with your eyes', but alas it wouldn't fit.)

I've finished the eighth and final instalment of Umineko: When They Cry!


( Thoughts on the final instalment of Umineko: When They Cry. )


And that's the end of Umineko: When They Cry!

What a strange, intense, beautiful, bewildering experience this has been. I can't believe I only started reading this in November. And I took a two-month break in the middle, so I read all over-a-million-words of it in the space of two months. I have lived a thousand years in that time. I have learnt so much about magic. I have accepted the terrible Ushiromiya family thoroughly into my heart.

Especially Battler, this goddamn idiot.

It's so strange to be finished! What am I going to do now? (Wait impatiently for chapter seven of Higurashi, I suppose.)

I've now finished the sixth instalment of Umineko: When They Cry!


( Thoughts on the sixth instalment of Umineko: When They Cry. )


I've been playing Baba Is You, and, honestly, these impossible Umineko murder puzzles seem like nothing compared to some of the levels in that stupid game. It's such a good puzzle game, but I'm so bad at it!