How did you discover Umineko?

07th Discussion
#1

I already apologize if this thread already exists or one like it. I couldn’t find it and the similar topic thing is not helping.

I discovered Umineko through first Higurashi, like probably many. I discovered Higurashi simply due to a comment someone left on a forum thread about how they wanted to know if there were more mystery anime like Higurashi out there, which got me curious. The first season of the anime was still airing back then and so I decided to give it a try completely randomly.
A long love story between me and Ryuukishi then began. I did my part to spread the love then~
However I had taken a sort of break from it after watching and then reading all of Higurashi, and only got into Umineko around the release of arc3. I wasn’t sure how much I would like it due to the characters looking less adorable… but when I finally decided to read arc1 I was not disappointed.

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#2

I found it a bit indirectly; I had been introduced, some months prior, to a really strange thing called Twitch Plays Pokemon (absolutely hilarious when it first started). So the train went a-chuggin’ and I found myself on their subreddit.

One chap made a bunch of fanart (mostly through screenshots and speech bubbles of Pokemon) to create a murder mystery series of sorts around some of the events and memes that happened on stream. At one point, it had grown to immense popularity in the subreddit, so he hosted a little “Red Truth/Blue Truth” session, where we had to post a Blue Truth and he would either ignore it or refute it in Red.

I had never heard of it, so I PM’d him, and he recommended me to Umineko. Bought it through MG when they were selling it (summer 2014) and played it over the next few months. Absolutely crazy fun insane.

However, at the same time, I had also approached it through another avenue: Avatar the Last Airbender, oddly enough. I had found the series through my old college roommates and really enjoyed it; that led me to look for similar animated shows, which led to Japanese animation—and visual novels.

And yet a third approach led me there as well. In my very ancient childhood, almost 18 years ago, I had been a very avid reader (still am, really), and practically lived at the bookstore. I had read several very old manga (I don’t think it’s even in print anymore; can’t find the name of it anywhere, though I’d love to for nostalgia’s sake. Very romantic stuff) and it stuck with me; I eventually started looking into it again (I had also read some Rurouni Kenshin, which led me to Japanese animation again).

So, oddly enough, I arrived there from three different points of inquiry. Kind of crazy, haha. It was my first visual novel, soon followed by one of my first anime: Angel Beats!, which led to my involvement in our sister site, Kazamatsuri. Everything’s tied together!

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#3

My path to 07th Expansion and KEY is really stupid o.o;

I used to go on Newgrounds back in the day and really liked a particular animation on that site. I think it was called “Lilium”? It was pretty popular on the site. The BGM was the main theme to Elfen Lied, so out of curiosity I watched Elfen Lied (and that’s the story of how I got into anime >.>)

I asked a friend for recs and she mentioned Higurashi, which I watched (and loved). I wanted to read the source material so I read the existing fan translation of Onikakushi (I think it was by Sonozaki Futago). From there I found about about Umineko and picked up the Witch-Hunt translation. (I think this was around the time EP4 came out.)

My foray into CLANNAD (and thus KEY) is pretty similar: I loved zts’s contributions to the Umineko soundtrack and looked up music from the Code ZTS circle, and found a remarkable remix of “Shining In the Sky” from CLANNAD:

watch?v=nluYVO-ybMk

And that’s how I got into CLANNAD :slight_smile:

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#4

Animenewsnetwork’s article about EP1 selling out in 30 minutes

It sparked an interest in me, but I forgot about it once the Higurashi Kai anime really took off a la Minagoroshi-hen. Higurashi Kai really cemented 07th Expansion as a main fandom of mine.

Years later, I believe I found the demo to it and decided to try installing it. I was hooked instantly especially the music. The chills I got with goldenslaughter just made me eager to read more. After finishing homework I would log onto my computer and Umineko the night away.

I was pretty much hooking on 07th Expansion from then on.

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#5

I don’t remember how long ago it was, but sometime in high school, I found the opening to the anime when I was looking for more anime from the same series. I saw the opening, and I had to keep watching for an ungodly amount of time before I saw the show.

After watching a bit of the anime, I was got curious as to how different the VN was. Even now I have a small obsession with “experiencing a series completely”, which basically means if I like a series, I’ll see every iteration to see which one is the best.

I’m pretty confident in saying that the Umineko VN is better than the anime. Any way, I found Umineko through my love for Higurashi, basically.

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#6

A friend got me into the Higurashi anime, and then I found the Umineko anime after that. I actually enjoyed it despite it being a terrible adaptation (didn’t have the original to compare it to at the time), but was annoyed that it didn’t have the second half.

A year or two later I got into VNs through Fate and S;G (both of which I also started with the anime) and then remembered that Umineko was a VN, found Umitweak (only 1-4 Umitweak patch was finished at the time), read 1-4 and loved it, and then waited nearly a year for the Chiru Umitweak patch and loved it even more.

#7

I was super into Higurashi, and there was art of Rena and Kanon together, so I started looking into it. This was while the Umineko anime was releasing, and I’m a video editor, so I really got into Umineko via the editing community, then via an RP forum, and then FB and tumblr.

#8

Key is what really got me into VNs (along with a friend giving me a bunch of VNs) so I guess I won’t talk too much about that :stuck_out_tongue: But what got me into VNs is, well, simply being in the VN “community” and looking around for highly-rated VNs that have an available English translation.

So, naturally, Umineko came up sooner or later (along with stuff like Ever17, Chaos;Head, etc etc); I don’t even remember where I did actually end up seeing it, sadly. So I guess, unlike most, I never even forayed into Higurashi by the time I started reading Umineko.

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#9

I watched the anime when I heard it was related to Higurashi. I loved the Higurashi anime, but never finished the Umineko anime, because, well, it wasn’t very impressive. I still haven’t seen all of it - don’t really know if I will ever bother. Still listen to the theme song for it somewhat often though.

Then last year I found out Yen Press has been translating the manga. Since there was no official English release of the VN at the time I started reading that. I am caught up with their release of it so far - so the first volume of Twilight of the Golden Witch. I still have not had any final end game spoilers, though I have a bit of pet theory for some of the remaining mysteries.

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#10

I have @Shads to thank for it. I got into visual novels through CLANNAD, which was around the time I got into university, so October 2013. I ended up reading a select few I had seen anime adaptations of, like Little Busters and Higurashi. Shads was one of the few people on a forum I frequented who was also into visual novels, and once I got done with Higurashi he pretty much insisted I move on to Umineko.

And good times were had.

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#11

Cause of Higurashi, boringly so. I watched the Higurashi anime last year and read somewhere online about this Umineko title that was related to it and thought that I would watch it sometime, but didn’t bother to look further into it. Then this year I started looking some things up on the internet about Higurashi and came across Umineko again and read a bit of information on it, and I started watched the not very well-done anime adaptation. I didn’t particularly like it, especially the later episodes, which I lazily watched, but I finished it and I’m now reading the dear, dear sound novels.

#12

You probably have this guy @Karifean to thank, I know that I looked at the steam page of Umineko and put it on my wishlist because it came up at some point on the Kazamatsuri discord, and I honestly don’t remember who of you talked about it, but as the before mentioned gentleman gifted it to me for christmas, I was here as early as I was.

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#13

I met a friend a few years back that really liked one of the characters. Her pattern of thinking was something I couldn’t understand, and I thought reading Umineko would make it easier. I started with the anime, and moved on to the visual novel. Best decision I ever made. I wasn’t expecting to get hooked, but I did.

#14

Technically, I’ve found all of 07th Expansion by a mistake.
Maybe about two or three years ago I asked a friend what series a character in a picture/gif I found was from but they incorrectly told me it was Higurashi.

Then around the time when Higurashi started being released on Steam I read Umineko’s manga after finding it’s related to Higurashi. Loved it, Then bought the Steam release after finding it.

Although, I never did find what series that original character was actually from.

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#15

When I was really starting to get into anime, I obsessively followed Glass Reflection on YouTube (still do). He recommended Higurashi in a bunch of his videos, and Umineko’s opening was on his top anime openings list. I watched and loved Higurashi, and when I want to Barnes and Noble with my grandma, I found volume one of Umineko and decided to read it. And the rest is history!

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#16

I knew Higurashi since 2005, but it wasnt until 2008 I knew Umineko! It was actually seeing manga art someone posted of Maria online, and really liking her character design. At first I thought “the title sounds so similar to Higurashi!” until I quickly realized its the same author!

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#17

Random plug by Witch Hunt about EP3 being 50% done on some random board. Those guys worked pretty hard to both translate and advertise Umineko to the english audience. Can’t thank them enough.

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#18

I’ve been told about Higurashi anime first, so I watched it. Then the same friend told me to watch the Umineko anime, when I completed it I realized there was more to the story. I wasn’t keen on reading the VN so I planned on reading the manga (I never did). It wasn’t until years later (this year) I finally motivated myself to read the full VN. No regrets. Now I’m trying to make everyone I know read the VN! Most of you here understand how beautiful the story can be, but those without love cannot see why.

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#19

My brother showed me Higurashi anime, I was shitscared and didn’t understand it at all, and was bewildered when I actually understood almost everything when I finished Kai. Somehow I managed to stumble on Umineko while trying to watch a Higurashi episode so I watched it, a bit reluctant, started liking it and became fan of the anime (don’t judge me pls). A few years later, I was reading the Visual Novels after years of training in english (wasn’t really hard anyway pfft). That’s basically how I began Visual Novels in general.

#20

I found out about Higurashi just as I was really getting into anime. I was apart of a community of voice actors and fandubbers. I guess due to the gruesome nature of the series, fandubbing Higurashi was really popular. A year or so later, the Umineko visual novel became a rather popular topic of discussion, too, but I didn’t see the appeal in reading the visual novel at all. It wasn’t as though I was opposed to visual novels–I had read Saya no Uta and Chaos;HEAd–but the art style really turned me off from it. It can’t be helped.

When the Umineko anime came out, it was also fandubbed to death. I didn’t see a lot of error with the anime, but I watched it to its completion. As someone who had never read the visual novels, and someone who was like, 14 when the anime came out, it really did feel like it was a fine adaptation on its own. Everyone joked that the anime didn’t exist, and I really didn’t understand why.

A few years later, I met my ex-boyfriend, who was a huge fan of Umineko. At his college, he had a group of friends that he would play “closed room” games with and discuss the visual novel with for hours. He would keep egging me on to read it, but I just never felt like it. I guess it wasn’t until I got really bored one semester in college and decided to start it up… and I’m really glad I did. But I really regret not getting into it when everyone was still talking about it. It’s popularity seemed to have died down quite a bit. ;;

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