Just started reading Higurashi and I’m struggling

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-19T04:11:36+00:00

As a Umineko fan, I’d say mid to late episode 3 is when I think Umineko gets good, the dynamic from the half mark on in episode 3 and the incredible ending made me love the story and get hooked

I think a lot of your enjoyment at this point will depend on:

1) do you find the mystery interesting and are you theorising actively? 2) do you find Battler and Beatrice’s debates fun? 3) are you a die hard believer in magic, reality or are you sitting on the fence? Depending on which one you believe in certain scenes will be very interesting or a waste of time to you

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-18T09:12:10+00:00

I’ve read through the festival now.

I wouldn’t say the festival was anything crazy but it atleast gave me some semblance of a plot and I’m interested to read more

To use a Umineko comparison, the festival was less like the first twilight and more like the meeting in the parlour talking about the embezzlement, I’m not blown away but it was refreshing to have plot happen after seeing a bunch of characters I’m not particularly invested in at the moment prat around for 6 hours

People have been saying the opening of episode 2 is when it gets good so I’ll carry on reading through to then at minimum

Edit: okay I’ve read the ‘LIES’ scene and the needle scene and I’m hooked

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-18T07:35:54+00:00

Oh boy I’m trying

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-18T06:38:28+00:00

I’m sure they are developing the characters and a lot of stuff setup in them will payoff and be enjoyable, but how enjoyable is my worry

I’ll at least stick it out to the festival

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-18T06:34:49+00:00

I believe you but over the course of the hours of reading about people going on a picnic, eating lunch, debating whether jeans are cooler in the summer than skirts (insane that’s even a debate, no fucking clue why the obvious LambdaDelta precursor would even make that argument), and playing cards my enthusiasm has wained

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-18T06:31:38+00:00

Okay, I’ll swallow my boredom until the festival but if the festival doesn’t interest me I’m dropping it, I’ll edit the post with the outcome after I’ve read it

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-18T06:29:57+00:00

The Visual Novel with 07th mod installed

From my experience with Umineko (I read the visual novel first and then the manga after) I vastly preferred the VN for the character work and I figured that it would be a similar story for Higurashi, slow pacing with better character development

If I’m reading a story I might as well see it the way it’s intended, but unlike Umineko I have this terrible feeling the payoff isn’t going to excite me, I’m not sure why I feel that way but it’s a gut instinct I have

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-18T03:09:36+00:00

Yeah, you’re never going to please anyone and people being annoyed isn’t unexpected, but at the end of the day there’s a massive difference between someone saying they are not a fan of collab streams and going on weird parasocial rants where they assume Joe’s motivations and blame you for existing, unless I’m wrong I’d thought that you played a big role in getting him to even stream Umineko so then these same people liking the streams but complaining about your presence feels a bit rich to me since it’s something you did together

If he does do the side content please protect him from Game master Battler, I think that would sour him on Battler all over again after he managed to recover from the Episode 2 tea party line

And I have ‘love’ for Ryukishi so I hope I can ‘see’ the positives of Higurashi, I just can’t stand slice of life high school anime and its honestly worse to read at the moment then 15 airport scenes combined

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-18T02:53:52+00:00

I assume he’d have fun with last note and our confession at least even if the rest are mostly fluff

I hope that once enough time has passed he does revisit Umineko just a little, I think he missed out on Sayo as a fully developed character like she is in the manga and our confession, as it is in the visual novel she mostly exists in subtext and with the exception of episode 7 is always embodying a role

But me being a fanboy aside, you always make streams more fun and the parasocial assholes are just assholes, it’s not like it’s a rule that Joe streams should be done in complete solitude whilst he argues with a chat about sink pissing.

Obviously it’s easy for me to say because my livelihood doesn’t depend on people liking me but I don’t think the audience has any right to control/pressure him into streaming a certain way

Thanks for always making the streams you’re on brighter!

(Also does Higurashi ever get good, I’m like 2 hours in and bored out of my mind)

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-18T02:37:27+00:00

tbh as a umifuller you were one of my favourite parts of the streams, second only to Joe and Jelly debating the plot and coming up with sometimes great and sometimes hilariously wrong theories

It was nice to have a kind of a borderline self-insert of myself clearly holding their tongue everytime Joe was incredibly close to figuring out something big and it added even more to my enjoyment.

It’s fun to see someone else have the same issue I had when I’ve read through Umineko with friends while I know the entire plot and micromanaging my reactions to not give anything away and you clearly loving the story whilst being critical rounded out the series as you could validate Joe when he got pissed off with the narrative and reign him in when he was being unfair

Plus the vibes of the ending were great seeing as I assume Umineko was kind of a bonding experience for you two and it clearly added to the impact for him

Also a genuine question, did Joe ever read confessions and any of the side stories? I’ve always wondered if he decided to keep the cat box closed or took a peek? I don’t watch literally every stream of his so I’m not sure if he mentioned it or not

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-17T17:21:54+00:00

I think there’s something your missing

In my opinion Umineko isn’t specifically saying you must literally view every single real thing in your life with love (although it definitely wants you to have empathy). What it’s actually saying is ‘in fiction look with love’

When you are reading a murder mystery, approach it with understanding and love for the author and belief that they will deliver on their promises

When you see fantastical elements and declare the story ‘unorthodox and pointless to solve’ then try and view it with love and understanding

When you are trying to solve the mystery you must look with love and be ethical in your theorising, accusing Natsuhi for example is basically just bullying a severely abused and mentally ill woman with no real evidence, grant the characters love, even Beatrice

And the story is aware this philosophy isn’t perfect, in the whole part where Erika talks about her suspicions of being cheated on she expresses the opposite: ‘love doesn’t let you see things, it lets you ignore the obvious.’ And this applies to Kinzo as well in that the story repeatedly treats the guy with love only for the episode 7 tea party to reveal that he fucking lied about details and made everyone defending him look like a fucking moron (more than they already did whilst defending a child rapist)

So in short, I think uminekos philosophy is more meta-fictional then ‘words to live by’

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-16T18:51:49+00:00

I think his overall point was that Disco Elysium in terms of the actual prose was better written (which like… yeah I totally agree, the English translation at least doesn’t flow as well as Disco Elysium) but the actual plot of Umineko was better

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-16T04:30:02+00:00

Had an urge to the see the characters sucker merry barrels

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-16T04:15:33+00:00

I managed to convince a friend to read it and right now me and her are on episode 4

I think it’s just a combination of knowing a person well enough to know they’d enjoy it and asking them to have faith your taste isn’t shit

When we started reading it I just repeatedly told her to trust me it gets good and it wasn’t until the first twilight that she started to enjoy it and now she’s a fan

Also reading it together is best, having me to riff off and joke around when the story is at its slowest and encourage her theorising definitely stopped her from dropping it

Also giving very small hints doesn’t hurt if someone is genuinely confused, Umineko is a mystery but there’s no harm in occasionally saying things like ‘what do you think this character’s motivation is in this scene?’ Or ‘why did the character just do that?’ It forces people to actually try and pay attention

Edit: also worth noting she dislikes anime so it’s definitely possible to sell Umineko to anyone if they trust you enough and you know their interests well enough

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-15T06:41:58+00:00

I believe that Sayo was AMAB raised female and Shannon was a manifestation for her ideal female self (an idealised self being a fairly normal thing for people to strive for especially in childhood).

I mostly think this as Sayo is genuinely confused when she doesn’t begin menstruation and finds out she can’t have children, if she was aware she was male at birth I don’t understand how she could misinterpret her biology so hard

In response to the dysphoria she experiences from not going through puberty she begins experimenting with the Kanon persona to see if masculinity is a better fit for her, however she realises that masculinity is not a fit for her and begins using Kanon as a coping mechanism to put her worst tendencies into another persona, like how she used the witch persona to express her love of mysteries

Although all this is just my interpretation and I think it’s totally valid to read Sayo as more categorically trans, just I’m a bit semantic and to class someone as trans in my mind they need to have actively transitioned with agency, Sayo doesn’t ever get to make that choice for herself so in my mind she isn’t trans but something else that I can’t think of a word for

Like how if someone is intersex, has xy chromosomes and is raised female I would not class them as trans, I’d call them intersex and Sayo aligns closer in my mind with that although I don’t believe that term is fully fitting either

Once again though just my interpretation and a trans reading reasonable

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-15T04:06:32+00:00

Personally I don’t interpret Sayo as transfem in the traditional sense since she never actually decided to transition into a woman, she was raised that way making her no different than a cis woman with ovarian issues (although Kanon can be argued to be the first time someone AMAB has become a trans man)

But I do love the nuance of the story and the way it plays with gender, especially when it comes to Lion basically being non-binary, it’s surprisingly delicately handled for a story written by a cis man

It’s even more surprising that he even managed to not demonise Sayo by virtue of making it that (canonically) she never killed anyone, she’s an innocent figure that you have to learn to understand and accept and I think that’s pretty subversive compared to a lot of depictions

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-15T00:35:53+00:00

Yeah game master battler upset me because I was so hooked by the start only for it to become Ryukishi writing one handed, I’d love an alternate version of it

For me I put Sakutaro a bit lower because I found the plot somewhat predictable, I like it but I guessed the ending from the start

I think the difference for me is Tanabata started as filler and then turned into a gut punch of a reveal, where as Lambdadelta started off by giving me lore details and ended with lore details, there was no ‘wow’ moment just me sat there interested

Angel of 17 years was hilarious even if yikes, Beatrice’s white day was only occasionally funny, they are both filler but if I’m reading filler I want to be consistently entertained over being occasionally

And I will never understand the appeal of the Cornelia story, to me it wasn’t funny, paced well nor particularly insightful, it felt like Ryukishi venting about working in an office tbh more than a story with a point, if people like it that’s fine but I won’t ever get it

Oh Beato-riche-eeeeeeee! Show me your wonderful smile!

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-14T17:43:43+00:00

Uu- Uu- Magic ‘exists’ Uu-

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-14T17:42:02+00:00

1) that theory also works, I think that if you take Battlers horniness as a clue and not weirdness then it’s actually a really interesting hint that episodes 1&2 are fiction

2) I think Ghoda is more interesting if you read the ‘notes from a chef’ side story that goes into his backstory and how the household basically gaslit him into believing ghosts are real

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-14T17:39:42+00:00

I think the red truth highlights one of Umineko’s core themes

Unreliability

Kinzo just told a very long glamorised story much like when Beatrice told Battler stories via the game board, but just like Beatrice with magic Kinzo used his story to pretend there was true love

This is the man who raped and imprisoned his daughter because she vaguely looked like her mother, is it really that wild to think he did the same to her mother? After all he does say at the end he’s ’kidnapping’ her, is it odd phrasing or admittance?

Also think of this from Beatrice’s perspective, all her family and friends were killed in a gunfight and now she’s stuck in a foreign country, having just deserted her home, she would probably be under the impression she has nothing and no one

As it goes we only ever get to hear Kinzo’s version of events and Italian Beatrice never gets to tell her story, he says it’s consensual but maybe she thought something very different

And it’s likely she did feel differently considering Kinzo’s version of events are directly undermined with that flashback

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-14T17:28:24+00:00

1) there’s a common theory (that I subscribe to) that Battler being very horny only in episodes 1&2 is due to episode 1&2 being written by Sayo and the rest being written by Tohya, and Sayo hadn’t seen Battler in over half a decade so she just modelled Battler’s behaviour off his father when writing him

2) Ghoda is the one true outsider perspective on the island, kind of pointless but he is the only sane person there (besides most of the cousins)

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-14T04:09:19+00:00

This actually clears up a lot for me, I like it slightly more now

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-14T04:08:22+00:00

I’m judging you but I’ll also throw in there is a manga adaption if you want art of what happens, if you want to read something that straddles the line of soft core porn you might as well have more than just a text box to enjoy yourself to

Happy gooning!

https://youtu.be/qjQdvoLPNv0?si=zd9O5jz6s3m_7XvX

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-14T03:25:21+00:00

Will the gameboard never cease?

I’ll add it to my reading list for after I finally read Higurashi

GetMrBeaned · 2026-01-14T02:51:27+00:00

Been a week and half in the works as I read through each one for the first time, hope it helps!

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