Higurashi When They Cry 1 [Anglais] [Broché]

Thanks to Yen Press, we are treated with the manga version of "When They Cry," which already hit the DVD market late last year.

The best part, however, is that the manga is just as good as the anime, and in some ways, surpasses the anime.

This volume of the manga covers the first story arc, "Spirited Away By the Demon." Keiichi Maebara is a typical teenage guy who hangs around the village of Hinamizawa with his female friends, Rena, Mion, Satoko and Rika. Although they have lots of fun together, Keiichi hears from various adults that every year during the Watanagushi (cotton-drifting) festival for the last five years, someone dies.

But Rena and others don't want to tell Keiichi anything about it. And Rena is especially suspicious, stalking his every move later on. Could she be connecting to the murders in Hinamizawa?

First of all, the manga drawings look beautiful. I never thought about how tiny Rena's skirt was in the anime until I read the manga. While the characters are in some ways more modestly dressed, some of them turn out entirely different. Mion, for example, has large [...], and even wants Maebara to grope them in the beginning.

Regardless, I love Rena's insane expression near the end of the book, when Keiichi declares that she's hiding something from him. Rena just looks extremely creepy when she completely goes berzerk. She's definitely got a messed-up past, as revealed in future volumes.

I'm really looking forward to reading more volumes of "Higurashi". I highly recommend this series.

Keiichi Maebara has just moved to Hinamizawa, a tiny village in a valley set deep within the mountains. Everybody knows everybody there, and his classmates Rena, Mion, Satoko, and Rika put a lot of effort into making him feel welcome and including him in their club activities. Unfortunately, the town is not as idyllic as it first seems. One day, while exploring an illegal garbage dump, Keiichi meets a photographer who tells him the story of a brutal murder that occurred there several years ago. Strangely, none of his new friends are willing to talk about it.

After the photographer disappears, Keiichi starts suspecting his friends of involvement in what he learns are not one but rather a string of mysterious deaths that may somehow be connected to the village's local deity, Oyashiro-sama. Worse still, he's afraid he may be next on their hit list! Paranoia mounting, he begins practicing his swing and carrying around a bat at all times. But even the bat may not be enough to protect him from Rena, whose dark past points to a sinister potential for present violence against Keiichi himself. How will Oyashiro-sama exact its unholy price?

One of the easiest and most effective ways to go about writing a horror story is to take something ordinary, something you see every day, and make it scary. The first two volumes of the Higurashi When They Cry manga, based upon a so-called visual novel computer game of the same name by Ryukishi07, do just that: It is an ordinary harem manga plot, the sort you have seen a thousand and one times over, that fast becomes terrifying.

The manga sets you up perfectly for your first scare with a beginning that could not possibly be more boring if it were a termite colony. The protagonist Keiichi is a--cliché alert!--transfer student surrounded and imposed upon by four lovely ladies who conform to typical harem manga archetypes. Yet by the end of the first chapter, Higurashi's horror side starts to rear its proverbial head, and by the second volume, any pretense of romantic comedy has fallen away completely. The manga is fun to read critically: Is Oyashiro-sama's curse real, or is it all just a figment of Keiichi's overactive, paranoid imagination? Needless to say, do not expect any easy, concrete answers.

Karin Suzuragi has brought this horrific uncertainty to vibrant visual life. Though the quality of her artwork and layouts per se are only average and her characters are not strictly attractive in the usual sense, she seems to know exactly how to transition between the adorable and the abominable--and does so with dramatic, nightmarish effect. The turn of a single page can turn the tone 180 degrees, and you have to be made of some pretty stern stuff not to be affected by it.

Of course, the volumes reviewed here are only just the beginning. The textual density of the original game storyline supports many adaptations, and numerous manga artists have contributed different pieces of the franchise. Yen Press's English-language release will eventually include the "Atonement Arc," with Suzuragi reprising her work on the series, which is supposed to answer the questions posed by this, the "Abducted by Demons Arc." Its premise may seem gimmicky, but make no mistake: Higurashi When They Cry is a surprisingly smart series that exceeds expectations. Highly recommended.

-- Casey Brienza

I'd first heard about this series through a documentary about Japan's geek culture. Well, to be more exact, I'd heard about the games. Mesmerized by the brief glimpse I'd seen, I tracked the series down... and discovered that it wasn't available in the US. Luckily for me, I did discover that it was going to be released in both manga & anime formats eventually. One book later, I'm hooked.

The beginning of the manga is deceptively peaceful. Keiichi Maebara has come to the small town of Hinamizawa, made friends & slowly gotten used to the easy life there. He spends his days in a small school that makes up the elementary, middle & high school classes, then passes the afternoons playing games with his new friends. It isn't until the night of the Cotton Drifing Festival that Keiichi begins to wonder what his friends could be hiding & why they're so quiet about the series of murder/disappearances that have occurred each year on the night of the festival.

The tone of this series is so freaky- I have to say that I love this series. There's a good mystery in this series & without reading the wikipedia entry for the series, I'd never have guessed what the whole secret of the town is. (Technically cheating, but I'd read the wiki entry before the series was brought over.) The tone is pretty adult though, so I wouldn't recommend this for extremely young readers or for those who don't like intense or semi-violent manga. The violence is all done mostly "off screen", although there are a few bits that will probably scare some readers. This manga is pretty much the whole package- it's got amazing art, GREAT storylines & you can really feel for the characters & their interaction with each other. I really do love this series!