When They Cry was first adapted to anime in 2006. The story is centred the fictional town Hinamizawa and follows Keiichi, A high school transfer student who quickly becomes acquainted with four girls, Rena, Mion, Rika, and Satoko. Life is completely normal for the group, that is until the Cotton drifting festival comes around. Every year for the past four years, on the night of the festival, someone dies and someone else is spirited away by the local god Oyashiro. Keiichi is all to soon pulled into the mystery surrounding the event. Each arc depicts one of the friends becoming affected by the curse of Oyashiro, each person suffers their own mental and emotional trouble. It just goes to show that everyone has a dark secret and that truth may hurt more than fiction.
My Review: I’m not sure how I feel about this show. On the one hand, it is very chilling and very always has some interesting things happening. On the other hand, however, the format of replaying the same event over and over again made it feel like there was no progress. That does not mean I didn’t like the format, in fact, I thought it was quite a stroke of brilliance that allows for multiple views on the same situation, uncovering more of the mystery. But as I said the show does suffer from a somewhat slow pace. On thing that really stands out is the art style, the show employs a simple and cute art style but depicts several very bloody and visually confronting moments. I did find that sometimes the show was a little bit too serious and dark but it works well for what the show is trying to do, so it’s not a bad thing.
I rate this anime 2.5/5.
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