Umineko When They Cry
(
TV) (2009)
Umineko When They Cry Blu-ray delivers stunning video and great audio in this fan-pleasing Blu-ray release
The affluent Ushiromiya family patriarch, Kinzo, is on his deathbed, and his family has assembled at their private island to discuss the division of his estate. As they bicker over their father's immense inheritance, a typhoon closes in, trapping them on the island. They suddenly receive an eerie word of warning... and then, in the dead of night, the murders begin.
One by one, family members are discovered murdered in bizarre and inhuman ways. Some within the family turn to superstition, blaming it on a witch rumored to inhabit the island. But one of them - the young Battler Ushiromiya - refuses to accept the supernatural and vows to uncover the real killer behind the seemingly impossible slaughters. He soon finds himself confronted by the apparent witch, and enters into a life-or-death battle for the truth.
For more about
Umineko When They Cry and the Umineko When They Cry Blu-ray release, see the
Umineko When They Cry Blu-ray Review published by
Jeffrey Kauffman on
December 7, 2012 where this Blu-ray release scored
3.5 out of
5.
Starring:
Sayaka Oohara, Daisuke Ono
»
See full cast & crew
Umineko When They Cry Blu-ray Review
And then there were eighteen.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, December 7, 2012
Maybe it's the fear of being isolated and helpless that causes so many writers to locate murder mysteries on islands. No
less a legend than Agatha Christie placed one of her most iconic creations,
And Then There Were None, on an
isolated atoll (even if the mid-sixties remake, titled
Ten Little Indians, placed it in a mountaintop ski chalet). More
recent entries like
The Girl
with the Dragon Tattoo and the flop CBS series
Harper's Island also utilized the gambit, as did the
disturbing 2010 Korean film
Bedevilled.
So it probably shouldn't come as any huge surprise that some enterprising creator would come up with a new franchise
that could encompass everything from videogames to anime.
Umineko When They Cry is a 2009 anime culled from
a so-called "sound novel" series, i.e., a sort of sonically enhanced videogame. The basic set up of the anime is indeed
centered around murders taking place on an isolated island, though there's a supernatural element at play, as well as a
patently weird twist of sorts that takes place part way into the series that may send some more literary types scrambling
for the copies of Dante's
Divine Comedy. And lest anyone think this is simply a retread of something you've seen
countless times before in works by the likes of Agatha Christie, Dama Agatha hardly ever had a teenaged boy hormonally
driven to squeeze girls' breasts (at least to my recollection).
The isolated island in this instance is called Rokkenjima, the ancestral home and current lavish estate of the Ushiromiya
family. In the series' nicely moody opening, we meet patriarch Kinzo, who is being informed he only has about three
months to live. Suddenly during a violent thunderstorm (is there any other kind in murder mysteries?) he rises and calls
out "Beatrice!" to a window brightly illuminated by some vicious lightning. We then segue to an October day in 1986
and
are introduced to several members of the Ushiromiya family courtesy of narration provided by the anime's focal
character,
Battler, a grandson of Kinzo who along with several other family members is arriving on Rokkenjima for an annual
gathering. And just in case you were wondering, Battler is indeed the lusty young male who has a fetish for girls'
bosoms,
something that is distinctly at odds with this series' tendency to otherwise focus on mystery and supernatural
elements.
In good and standard mystery fashion, we quickly become aware that there is some internecine strife in the Ushiromiya
family, especially as they are beginning to machinate over who is going to inherit the bulk of Kinzo's vast wealth. There
are several characters quickly introduced in this segment, some with "freeze frames" that also offer quick textual
elements that help to quickly identify their roles and relationships, but there are still a lot of people to keep track of in
Umineko When They Cry, and one of the anime's central problems is that it never develops the characters well
enough that they're properly differentiated, let alone becoming people that the viewer cares about in any meaningful
way.
Almost immediately, characters start dropping like flies, and one of the family's youngest members, a sweet little girl
named Maria, keeps insisting that the murderous handiwork is courtesy of a witch named Beatrice. There is a legend
about this witch which the family is aware of, including a mysterious epitaph that lore has it must be solved in order for
the family fortunes to properly pass to the next generation, but in one of the anime's most head scratching moments,
no one seems to care about
that and instead repeatedly focuses on which of the survivors could be the culprit.
This simultaneous focus on the witch and her mysterious epitaph and the humans' resolute refusal to believe in her
existence becomes a recurring motif and indeed turns out the be the central conflict of
Umineko When They Cry
once the series gets into its middle arc, which is a bizarre turn into an alternate universe left field.
One gets the feeling that the adapters of
Umineko When They Cry may have been gun shy about getting into
what seem to be some thorny philosophical debates that may have been treated more in depth in the sound novel. We
get passing references to all sorts of famous conundrums like Schrödinger's Cat without enough context for it to make
sense either within the confines of the anime itself or indeed as a standalone idea. The series does repeatedly exploit
several fantastic tropes in the mystery genre, great things like "locked door" paradoxes (an element which in its own
way might be seen as a microcosm of the whole "isolated island" thing). The show also evolves over what might be
termed "mini-arcs", as evidenced by a different numbering system used for groups of episodes, and each of those
typically feature their own "mini-mysteries", some of which are on their face quite intriguing, but which are typically used
only as fodder for the dialectic approach that is in many ways this series' defining characteristic.
What the viewer is left with, then, is a fitfully interesting piece that seems to be one thing but which turns out to be
quite another. The series would have been better without its kind of silly comedic elements (and that includes the
passing fan service which is really an odd mix with a supposed mystery series like this one), and it might have been
more compelling had the opening few episodes developed several of the characters more fully before they all start
getting sliced and diced and discarded like yesterday's trash. Once we get into the "debate" (for want of a better
word) between Battler and Beatrice the series actually becomes significantly more interesting, though even here there's
a feeling that things are being merely referenced rather than fully explored.
Umineko When They Cry Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
I'm a little on the fence with regard to
Umineko When They Cry, part of which may be due to the fact that I was in
fact expecting more of a standard murder mystery and was thrown for a loop when the supernatural elements (not to
mention the alternate universe) burst into the show. (Think of how you
Lost fans felt when the "alternate timeline"
suddenly showed up for a good example.) The show may be trying to do too much while at the same time ironically
providing far too little information about either the characters or the philosophical quandaries in play to ever fully connect
with the audience. This arc of episodes seemed to introduce what may be a time travel element right toward the end, and
that will only further complicate matters. But there's enough here to have definitely piqued my interest, and there's
no denying that this is one gorgeous looking anime.
Recommended.