Usually, my strategy is to market it as both “probably the greatest piece of writing to have come out in the last 20 years” and “Harry Potter meets Phoenix Wright meets And Then There Were None” although that second one is a bit inaccurate. I usually tell them that if they aren’t invested by the end of EP 1, they can drop it, but then again, only one person I’ve tried to convince to read it has gotten that far.
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I’m surprised you guys have had some success getting anyone to read it. No one I know really likes Japanese media, and no one I’ve tried to get Umineko has made it very far before stopping, if they’ve tried at all. Even my friends that hear me ramble on and on about it, they sorta just nod their head and give me the kinds of answers you’d get when someone isn’t really invested in what they’re hearing; “Oh?” or, “Aha, sounds cool.” or, “Why?” Sometimes I stop talking because I get so discouraged. Usually explaining the “why” part of Umineko to someone leads to them playing on their phone, nodding absentmindedly, turning up their music, or changing the subject. 
The real problem is, Umineko is basically all I care about, and it’s all I think about. It’s all I ever want to discuss, too, so when I decide it’s not worth talking about to my friends that show such disinterest, they get mad at me when it’s like day 12 with no contact or phone calls or something.
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I pestered my friend a fucking lot and eventually got him the question arcs for his birthday and is currently on the first part of episode 2.
I have another friend who bought the question arcs on condition that I play the Witcher 3 but we both haven’t lived up to each other’s promises just yet. (I got him into danganronpa that he really liked so he now semi-trusts my judgement on good games)
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I count more fails with IRLs then success here, with successes being countable with a hand. Net/club successes I would semi-discount (but still props for those who succeeded) since most cases seem to be preaching to the existing crowd of VN readers.
I think the best story I heard was the one where the friend read EP1-3 aloud to the other friend to get them into it. I almost feel like you have to do them a favor in order for them to pay you back by reading.
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This is definitely accurate, that it feels like you have to do someone a favor for them to get reading. It’s quite discouraging that no one really takes interest because they think it’s interesting - at least, that hasn’t been the case offline. When I read Umineko, it was because I wanted to understand a friend. I wasn’t asked to read it, and she was surprised I did. I ended up becoming absorbed in it, even more so than she is. I feel like someone taking the dive without being pestered or asked is an incredibly rare thing, after all my failed attempts to get both offline and online friends to even try it.
I think I’ll just quote myself from this other post about adversing Higanbana to new readers, as I addressed to all of the other works as well.
About getting other people into 07th Expansion works in general
I would add however, that making part of their theory making without revealing precious info and instead giving ambiguous hints like any good Game Master (ahaha.wav all day long) is the better way to go.
Even better if you have other people reading and let them talk about it… that part however I would say it’s better to be done only with people who are in the same EP as them in the very least (I used to make posts tagging these people on Facebook and their respective progresses to facilitate this discussion matter), but as the number of people reading around me increased so much, I began throwing them in chat groups for each respective EPs they were in. They would then leave the chat as soon as they finish reading that said EP, and ask me to get him into the “Up to EPx” group chat. I would make part of any of these (I do use Facebook a bit too much after all) and discuss and give non-spoileristic hints in case no one would answer a person who would want to talk about something.
In any case, like most of these specific group chats, they end up dying a bit fast even when there are many people to discuss (especially when these groups are composed of university students too worried about “dem difficult exams all the time”), so, I just try managing the discussions when people feel like talking about it in person (once in a while I get a question or another in those still, but they are rare).
Just to add some curiosities about my own experience regarging that matter, as Umineko is something I DEDICATE myself to get people into:
A pattern I understood fairly quickly about Umineko is that most people tend to marathon the whole EP1 up to a random part of EP2 as soon as possible once reached the first “Day 2” in the VN (many stall very heavily during “Day 1”, which is comprehensible, given that the introduction is so freaking huge and detailed).
At that, I abandoned EP1 as a chat option as it could lead to potential spoilers about the yet-not-revealed-to-be-looped deaths from people who would go asking “When it does get good and what happen” (and that happened 2-3 times, people in here don’t seem to get to worried about spoiling stuff from the beginning even if them themselves are still on it, as EP1 as a whole is widely known considered to be but a introduction for something so much bigger even by some people I know that didn’t yet started reading). Instead, I begin "meme"ing up (thanks for making characters so easy to have fun with, Ryukishi) some parts and dialogues using some printscreens to indirectly encourage some more reading occasionally up to when they would pick it up again.
Another curiosity is what I call “The Big Hiatus”, which happens to literally every single person I kept track of the Seacats reading thing. Normally it happens around between the beginning of EP5 up to the end of EP6, and the reasons to it vary a lot:
Some feel dismotivated to continue yet another half after it took so long for them to finish EP1-4, others just get absolutely frustrated as for getting overall clueless about anything at all after EP4 (that by the way, besides being a longer, confusing and painful read, I’m impressed it isn’t where people goes “Hiatus” on) started getting exhausted of the mystery and decide giving a break… and there’s this other group I love that, after hearing that EP7 is where major stuff gets revealed (my main motivator for most people during EP5-6), do their hiatus on purpose until they figure it out by themselves and asking me if it’s right or wrong… which doesn’t really go for too long (unless they are waiting other people to discuss, after all, it’s on Chiru that most people really start wanting to discuss things, and the hiatuses kinda contribute to that in a way), after they either reach the truth (only 2 people I know thus far managed to connect the dots properly, and I applaused their efforts, they even had a little notebook for Umineko stuff just like me), while the others ultimately don’t really get it and can’t go pass my little examination, choosing instead to just read EP7 already (I make some statements like “and how you explain this”, “how is that related to that”, or just straight denying especific non-revealing stuff with the RED statements) until they either give up and proceed with EP7, or just keep trying until they can properly explain it).
Which leads to “The Great Marathon” (most of the people who reached that far reading the entirety of EP7 and EP8 in less than 2 weeks), and joining the “cool goats” team. Most of them have many questions about it even after the end, so we just explain to them what they missed, some crazy foreshadowings from other chapters, and overall help out with the doubts they might have, especially about a certain someone’s timeline (freaking Ange’s case still is one of my biggest challenges to understand in Umineko’s entirety, it took me a LONG while or the overall Meta explanation (to be fair, holy crap, that was one huge revealing that takes quite a reread or two of the whole thing to even be able to explain without getting stuck… heck, if it wasn’t for the manga’s explicit helping hand, I wouldn’t even be able to figure out by myself a certain really nice revealing that was part of it (a.k.a. Forgery of EP3 -> Eva visiting Ikuko’s house and giving her diary to them -> Explaining certain developments in the entirety of the presentation of future Episodes ).
After that is done, I properly instruct them about how to mislead new players which would ask them for clues without giving them spoilers, but still helping them. As of now, I have 6 people in this little “Ask the Game Masters for some tips” business going on… though most people end up just asking me directly still, which is fine to me besides being kinda time consuming to be honest lol
And this is how getting people into Umineko feels like to me, and I love every single moment of it.
As of now, I’m also reading in group with 11 other people (4 of which are veterans, while the rest didn’t finished the VN just yet), each person dubbing certain characters, while everyone have fun discussing the scenes live, altogether (we are streaming it on Twitch, and uploading to Youtube just after… or so I wish, I actually stopped uploading there since 6 months ago because I’m lazy with that stuff and it fails way too often to upload such a large file, re-starting from 0 every time it does lol).
I did subtitled the first 3 videos of said amateur experient in English if anyone is curious about it (and don’t mind Brazilian people butchering the poor English language… hey, that’s kinda part of the fun too actually), here:
Umineko Streaming in group with HUE people
That aside, these are pretty much all of my hints as to how to get people into Umineko and how to manage the theory crafting between them properly.
PS:
Ironically enough, I abandoned this forum for a almost an year in guilt for accidentally disrespecting the guidelines and posting spoilers in spoiler free topics. That’s a major fuck up of which I won’t forget too soon. But welp, I’m back and will do my best to help people to get others to read Ryukishi’s amazing and often overlooked works.
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I used to talk about it so much to everyone around me when it was still on-going, though since visual novels were still lesser known… I didn’t really get that much takers. I only managed to get one friend in college into it by introducing them to the manga and then the visual novel.
I think I made a mistake of sending everyone in my social discord weird out of context shit about Umineko. A few people are interested, but it’s a huge time commitment, you know? I also think they’re intimidated by both how intense I was about it while reading it and how much I’m still into it. It’s fine. I make memes for them. They call Kinzo “Occult Grandpa” and only refer to George as “Fedora”. It’s the best I could hope for, I guess.
They still don’t know the plot… they only know that the point of the game is to figure out who Beatrice is, and they get angry when I say I can’t because it’s way too complicated.
Uhhh, I have one success story, but I really don’t know how it happened. I suppose it’s just personality?
EDIT: I also tell all of my trans friends that there are trans characters portrayed well. They never believe me entirely, but idk you sort of learn to be jaded.
CW drugs.
A friend tells me there’s another trans person in my city they grew up with who likes anime. I’m like “sweet”. We add each other on facebook and don’t talk for months. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I DM her and ask if she has any recs of where to buy weed (it is legal in my city), and she invites me over. Basically, we got high and started talking about anime. I very, very messily described the concept of Umineko and got her to buy the game. Now, she plays it sometimes while stoned and sends me updates.
She even got out of the airport without a single complaint! Wowwee.
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For me, I basically tell them it’s essentially an old style murder mystery whodunnit at face value and aesthetics wise initially, but it goes into psychological, spiritual, metaphysical, and thought-debates that go on for many, many hours of reading.
I say to them it’s less like a linear story to read and enjoy at once, like a light snack, but a many-course meal you’ll need to pace yourself and take time to digest and think about carefully, in order to read it all enjoyably. I feel Umineko isn’t a kind of story one can bullet through, since there is a lot to consider and think about in between the arcs and during the meta debates. If you aren’t taking the time to also think about the concepts during the reading itself, it quickly becomes overwhelming to a new reader.
I don’t know if anyone here has read it, but a mainstream book called “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell” is a lot like Umineko in that regard. There is a lot of world building and footnotes to read and digest - it can’t be read freely like a linear story can. It’s basically a “heavy read” and I leave it at that for potential newcomers.
I don’t tell anything plot wise about the story itself, or characters, since I want them to get immersed in the world and characters by their own accord, not coloured or biased by my own perceptions and likes and dislikes. I only speak generally about the themes, aesthetics, length, music, and genres - and let them to decide for themselves.
Of course this varies depending on who I’m talking to as well - if there’s something in Umineko I know my friend will have something relatable or very interesting, or would love to read, I introduce it to them. For example with my spiritual circle of friends, I’m always talking about how much the meta world reminds me of the astral, and that alone piqued their interest. Or as well the references to the Solomonic magic in Umineko, was what got one other friend into reading it, since there are rarely fictional stories that present those themes or topics in a more narrative way (than simply instructional, for example). So that is another factor!
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HOW???
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He looks at me and goes “ohhhhh… the vase… we put the pieces back together…” and it’s REALLY funny
So I have a VN recommendation thread on Umineko, and this is the relevant post on it where I pitch it :
And someone also asked me to elaborate on why I think Umineko’s female cast is so well written. Here is my word vomit on that lol : https://pastebin.com/XvbJbt4e
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I recently told to a certain someone that Umineko was basically in structure…
“An encrypted message where the cypher to decode it was the answer to a really complex puzzle, each of these two taking the form of separate layers of the story”
… we’ll see the result but it seems to have piqued more their interest than “a mystery story” at the very least.
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“It’s a murder mystery with meta-elements in it”. I don’t mention Beato’s character, but then no points hiding it like she’s some big secret given her face is basically everywhere these days.
I was well known in Israel for being the “read Umineko Mafia”.
But on the more serious matter, it actually REALLY depends on what person I speak to. Like, some people I just need to give them a general hook about “it’s a murder mystery that puts two questions on the table - who’s the killer, and if the killer is a magic user or not” or something general like this. Some people are hooked by designs (I cosplayed 8 Umineko characters), or so on.
On other hand, I had one friend who got like “I don’t feel like reading but can you show me that cool Will and Lion scene at the end of EP7 you mentioned once?”
After I showed her THE END OF EP7 she went ahead and read everything.
So it’s hard to tell how to make people read, it depends on the person you speak to. Different people are hooked in different ways.
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Agreed. I must admit, I always tend to make very personalized recommendations as well and therefore I have no set guideline about what I tell about the story. Though admittedly, because I know nobody who reads Visual Novels and only very few people who maybe could be convinced to take up the Manga, it is very hard for me. To make people get a sense of how brilliant the story is, I usually tend to highlight quite a few parts. In hindsight, maybe it is just because I don’t care very much about spoilers or because Umineko is confusing enough even with knowing what you have to look out for, but I consider pretty much everything except the identity of Beatrice and Tohya fair game. I just make it clear that given the layered nature of stories within stories within stories, most plot points are going to get different meanings later on anyway.
My go-to summation about what Umineko is about is usually thus: A deconstruction of classical detective fiction in the style of Agatha Christie. And just like “And then there were none”, it is about a large cast gathering on an island mansion and getting trapped amidst a typhoon for two days, at the end of which all of them died and you as the reader are supposed to find out what the hell happened. I then usually go on about the epitaph, that it is intended as a macabre riddle that leads to a hidden pile of gold and who finds it is supposed to become the successor of the dying patriarch. But when you read it literally, it describes an occult ritual in which everyone present has to be sacrificed in order to revive his dead mistress, the witch Beatrice. Of course the culprit goes for the literal interpretation… and just like the epitaph can be read as either mystery or fantasy, the whole story splits in half, with the fantasy reading the one being presented, but a mystery solution always possible to construct. And that this discussion becomes the focus from episode 2 onwards.
Let’s see whom I tried to recommend it to in the past:
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Fanfic writers: I must admit that while I was reading episode 6 for the first time, I kept gushing over Erika and how she is an absolutely marvellous Parody Sue on a fanfic forum, causing quite a number of people to raise their heads and ask what kind of amazing story she comes from. Hell, we all know what Mary Sues are, we all have read them, so seeing one so mercilessly self-aware is an absolute joy for us! I then quickly explained the premise and what role Erika has, but due to it being so ridiculously long, I only know of one person who picked it up for real afterwards and now comes chiming in whenever I go on an Umineko rant and tries to convince the others to give it a chance after all. Some Manga pictures of Beatrice and her red truth were also very effective in causing some resistance to topple. I caused at least one other girl to read the manga but she stopped after episode 4 due to time restraints and I have to restrain myself so much in our Umineko discussions, because she still has no idea who Beatrice is. Even after she read my Umineko fan episode in which Beato is the killer as well and I pretty much showed all the solutions until Beatrice confirmed in red that ‘Kanon is not the culprit’ because, I am fairly sure that’s a thing she can do.
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Fellow Students with little experience with Anime/Manga: Here I usually end up gushing about the layered storylines and indeed point out that Umineko is stories within stories within stories, written by certain characters to be read by certain characters for distinct purposes. That’s about as specific as I get before dialing back to the main premise of it being a deconstruction of the detective genre and how it merges “And then there were none” with a healthy dosis of “Alice in Wonderland” and then my go-to explanation above. So far it wasn’t quite that successful. I got several people to listen and to agree that it sounds like a very clever story, but they usually didn’t have the time to delve into it. I got one fellow Computer Science student to read a few passages of the VN with me and he seemed very interested, I also got another fellow History student to start to read the Manga this way, but she was immediately thrown off by the crude artstyle and Battler’s idiotic sexual harrassment and abandoned it, much to my chargrin. WHY THE HELL HAS THE FIRST MANGA CHAPTER BE SO RIDICULOUSLY BAD?!? At least she has agreed to watch the Higurashi Anime last time I saw her, but I don’t know what became out of that.
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Then there is one fellow Computer Science student who does have VN-experience, having been reading Fate/Stay Night whenI recommended Umineko to him. But due to too little time, he voiced no intention to pick Umineko up, but did watch the Higurashi Anime upon my recommendation and was quite hooked and kept asking me what I thought of his theories. Admittedly I was messing quite badly with him and made him think Rika is the Big Bad. XD I actually wouldn’t put it past him to have picked up Umineko afterwards, but I don’t know.
I used to tell my friend a lot about Umineko and how it is the most complex story I have read, but somehow that didn’t get through. What got through was her listening to Ricordando il passato from me numerous times and then listening to it on her own. One day she just started watching a let’s play video on youtube and continued from there. She has been close to finishing Ep 4 for a few months now, but unfortunately due to having to go to two jobs and attend college at the same time, she took a break.
I’ve told many others about Umineko and its multilayered structure, but none got to reading it so far. Most people get interested when I tell them about the overall plot of the series, rather than the plot of the first game.
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I convinced my best friend to read it and she really loved it. I have one more friend I think will enjoy it, but she is quite sensitive, and considering all taboo topics in Umineko, I’m not sure I want to subject her to it. Lastly I’m having my boyfriend read it. He isn’t used to VNs, but he is determined, so I have no doubt the entire thing will be finished. (He’s currently reading EP4)
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I have a friend who watched the Higurashi anime and liked it, so I showed them the Umineko anime and only revealed after the last episode that the answer arcs were missing, and that’s how I made she read Umineko. As bad as the anime is, it at least serves the purpose of making people curious.
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Interesting. Despite my first exposure to Umineko having been the Anime as well, I tend to only recommend the manga to those who have no time to read the VN (which is virtually everyone, technically me included). Though like I said above, that tended to backfire with peope who have little interest in Manga to begin with. That one acquaintance I got to read the manga together with me was immediately put off by how Battler is introduced groping Jessica. And I can’t blame her, those scenes of him playing the perv are totally unfunny and irritating and I blame the episode 1 manga starting as weird as it does a lot for why so many people drop it right away.
Then again, the Anime starts virtually the same way… -.- No love for the airport scene at all…
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