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Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

March 2, 2010 by Megan M. 2 Comments

Higurashi: When They Cry, Vols. 4-5

Guest Review
Higurashi: When They Cry, Vols. 4-5
By Ryukishi 07, Yutori Houjyou, and Jiro Suzuki
Published by Yen Press

Review by Megan M.

Buy This Book Buy This Book</td

A newcomer to the small hamlet town of Hinamizawa, Keiichi Maebara makes friends quickly among the students at his new school. He also learns that the town has a history of grisly murders occurring on the night of the local Cotton Drifting. What’s more, some of his new friends seem to be intimately (and tragically) involved in the town’s gruesome history.

Based on a popular murder mystery game, Higurashi: When They Cry depicts multiple versions of a single story, drawn by various artists. Volume four wraps up the “Cotton Drifting” arc and volume five begins the “Curse Killing” arc. The difference in approach between these two volumes is most easily demonstrated by discussing their art styles. Yutori Houjyou’s art in “Cotton Drifting” is a fairly standard in terms of character design, but dark, creepy, and occasionally shocking. Her characters, even the more lighthearted ones, have a depressing air of gravity to them. Jiro Suzuki’s art in “Curse Killing,” on the other hand, is in broad slapstick, featuring plenty of visual humor and moe character designs (along with the usual fanservice). I found the adjustment jarring, and volume five’s borderline-inappropriate comedy kept me from being able to care about the tragedy surrounding the characters.

One interesting note: unlike similar stories, which tend toward gratuitous display of female corpses, Higurashi doesn’t play gender favorites when it comes to victims. Though it’s true there are more female corpses than there are male, there are also far more female characters overall.

I consider it to almost be a crime to watch Clue (a brilliant black comedy from the 1980s) without watching all the endings, so I’m intrigued by a canon that centers around different possibilities in a single story. Unfortunately, this one didn’t quite work for me. Though Higruashi: When They Cry is by no means bad manga, I don’t think it’s a series for me.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

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Filed Under: REVIEWS Tagged With: higurashi when they cry, manga

About Megan M.

Megan is a customer service representative for an evil credit card company who lives in Texas. She would be a single English major living alone with a cat if her apartment complex allowed pets, and has compensated for the lack of a cat with far too many books. She has read so much that it has turned her brain, and her shelves are overflowing with romance novels, fantasy novels, mystery novels, american comics, and, of course manga. If one looks closely, one may spot the rare volume of Serious Literature, valiantly gasping for air, struggling to survive in the sea of popular fiction. Her fictional preferences for women with weapons and attractive, often roguish, male accessories were firmly established at a very young age due to early exposure to Star Wars and Willow.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jade says

    March 4, 2010 at 11:01 pm

    What I really liked about this series wasn’t so much the mysteries as the subtle darkness burbling under the surface of moe tropes and seeing that darkness spill out when Pandora’s Box is opened up. It reminds me a lot of Mulholland Drive. That said, I have to agree that Curse Killing Arc left me cold. It didn’t seem like the exploration of the dark side of moe that I felt in previous volumes, it seemed more like a straight fetishisation of those themes followed by an uninspired inversion for the sake of plot.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. New comics day « MangaBlog says:
    March 3, 2010 at 9:09 am

    […] Worth Reading) Michelle Smith on vols. 11-13 of Cheeky Angel (Soliloquy in Blue) Megan M. on vols. 4 and 5 of Higurashi When They Cry (Manga Bookshelf) Christopher Butcher on Little Butterfly (omnibus edition) (About.com) Julie on […]

    Reply


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