Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Screenshot Let’s Play and Transcription
Since June of last year, I’ve been doing a mostly-on-sometimes-off playthrough, transcription, and Let’s Play of the Steam and GOG port of Higurashi When they Cry/Higurashi no Naku Koro ni on Something Awful. Someone else actually already made a forum-based, screenshot Let’s Play of this game years ago (and finished it!), but half of the images in the first arc are broken and it’s a little hard to parse.
So I thought, why not kill three birds with one stone? I can create a proper transcription of Higurashi that will be saved on its own dedicated server (the LPs in Something Awful are archived both on SA and lparchive.org, the latter once it is completed). I can also reread this sound novel that I am incredibly fond of.
Most importantly, I hope that this LP gets more people to read Higurashi. For people who either don’t want to pay 50 dollars on Steam/GOG for all of the arcs or sit down and commit 60 hours to watch video footage of a game released in 2002, this format lets you read it at your own pace in just a couple of days.
This is how the LP is presented. People who are familiar with and/or fans of Higurashi will notice a few things about this— and my choices are explained in the masterpost (which you can see as soon as you click the link to the LP). I also recorded every update in video form and put a link to it at the top of every update. (Higurashi is a sound novel after all, not a visual novel.) The recordings also have some fantastic voice acting, so check that out if possible.
I update three times a week on Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday.
Here’s the link.
My sales pitch, for those uninitiated to Higurashi or do not know why they should read it, is under the cut.
Some people may know of Higurashi because of its rather infamous Studio DEEN anime adaptation. The yandere anime or whatever.
(This is the cover of a Higurashi video game released in 2014 but the art is pretty similar to the anime’s ssshhhhh)
In the game, you play as Keiichi Maebara, a city boy who recently moved to the peaceful and close-knit village of Hinamizawa. While he initially spends his days playing various games with his new friends, the discovery of a string of disappearances and murders that happen in the village set him on a path towards conspiracies, paranoia, and a fight for his own life.
One of the game’s more memorable aspects is how it endears you to the characters through the slice-of-life aspects of the story, until those idyllic days slowly morph into something much more sinister. That in and of itself is nothing new in the horror and thriller genre— pretty much every dime a dozen horror movie starts with a peaceful suburb being threatened with a serial killer or monster on the loose, after all.
Where Higurashi differs is that it doesn’t stop there, but starts pulling the reader in, makes them want the horror and thrill to stop, for the idyllic days to come back. They start off engrossed in the wonderfully unsettling atmosphere that the author, Ryukishi, crafts with nothing but images, text, and sound. As they read one arc after another, they gain more questions even as some are answered.
Because, surprise— Higurashi is a slife-of-life, comedy, horror, suspense, thriller, murder mystery.
Every arc takes place in the same timeframe: June of 1983, but things are different. Something that happens in one arc doesn’t happen in another arc, and vice versa. Even though the characters do not retain their memories of past arcs, they still perform different actions at different times as strings are pulled behind the curtain. As someone with an omniscient viewpoint of the entire story, it is your job to piece together the puzzle and figure out just what is causing the deaths in Hinamizawa.
If that interests you, I’ll link the Let’s Play once more at the end of this post. The first post is the masterpost, which has even more information on the game as well as the LP itself. If nothing else, please read the trigger warnings. Higurashi is not a kind game to those who are squeamish. This may only be Ryukishi’s first big work— his writing and pacing is fairly rough for the first two arcs— but there’s a reason this game so thoroughly took over the fandom consciousness in the 2000s. His writing is, if nothing else, completely his own and paints vivid depictions of the cruelty humans have to live through every single day.
(A tidbit to note is that the author used to be a social worker. He writes about the topic with great skill but it is all very hard to watch/read.)
The game is also uh…very anime. It was initially sold in Comiket, after all. If you have a low tolerance for anime bullshit this might be a hard read for you. But underneath everything, the story is, at the core, a very touching one about the bonds between friends. Higurashi has a heart, no matter how ugly its exterior may seem at first glance, and I urge you to give it a shot.
Here’s the link again.
By the by, if you’re interested in a more “straightforward” murder mystery (more of an actuual murder mystery, much less straightforward), you should check out Ryukishi’s next work, Umineko no Naku Koro ni, which someone else already LPed. If you want to see how he might be like, trying to, solve…world conflict…?, the person who LPed Umineko also did one for the first arc (or Phase as it’s called) of Ciconia no Naku Koro ni. It’s all a bit vague for Ciconia, we really only have one chapter to go off of. None of these “sequels” require knowledge of the former entries to enjoy them.
demonic possession is a decent trope but you know what's even better? demonic cohabitation. just 2 people sharing the same body and both being the world's worst roommate about it.
Namaygoosisagagun First Nation/Collins has burned to the ground. The entire community is nothing but ashes after being quickly consumed by wildfires. They did not have any support from emergency services, and no one offered aid. The community saved themselves by escaping into boats because no one came.
Mishkeegogamang and Cat Lake have lost power. Families are ending up in shelters with nothing. Armstrong, Lac La Croix, Whitesand, Gull Bay, Lac des Mille Lacs are currently in the fires path and all members are being evacuated.
All this loss, all this devastation, and it was entirely preventable.
After steadily underfunding wildland firefighting and purposefully excluding Indigenous wildland firefighters and Indigenous wildfire organizations from wildfire operations, firefighter training, decisionmaking, and resource exchanges, in 2025, Doug Ford slashed the forest firefighting budget.
It's hard to ignore his decision to cut funding and leave us out of adequate fire training (even though we've lived with forest fires for thousands of years—far longer than settlers have been in Canada—and made sure fires like the ones we're all seeing today were prevented through kinisitotēn) when, despite making up less than 5% of the population, we account for 42% percent of all wildfire evacuations in Canada.
And when we are successfully evacuated, we face discrimination and racism—like Kashechewan—because it's always been easier to blame us than it is to blame the true culprit: denialism, corportate greed, and colonization.
The people of Collins and every other impacted community deserve better.
Right now, the AFN is currently accepting donations to help Collins First Nation. If you're able to, please consider donating.
ONWA (Ontario Native Women's Association) is another great place to donate to. They have outreach vans going to motels and inns and offering food, water, resources, and cultural support to those impacted by the wildfires.
Other places to consider donating to are Mikinakoos Emergency Fund, Red Cross, True North Aid, Indigenous Climate Action. You can also send donations directly to Whitesand First Nation via e-transfer ([email protected]) and they request that you add your full name in the e-transfer comment section to receive a tax receipt.
*Before sending money, verify that the appeal appears on an official First Nation, Tribal Council or registered charity channel.
If you can't offer financial support, please consider donating items of need. Moontime Connections is currently accepting drop-off donations. If you live in the Thunder Bay area, Namaygoosisagagun Health Office is also taking in donations! They can also bemailed to Superior Inn Hotel & Conference Centre at 555 West Arthur Street, Thunder Bay, ON, P7E 5P8.
The school year is about to begin. Please don't ignore this post. Share it to help us complete the school's preparations. Please donate to educate our children; it's a right that has been taken away... No matter how small your donation may seem, it's life for us. Please share and donate.
The Coastal Initiative in Gaza urgently needs your support to laun… Asma Yunis needs your support for Help the children of Gaza get a safe a
i go to the shop and I ask if they have any raspberries. they say no, they used to sell raspberries, but they haven't had any in stock in the last 15 years. I ask if there's somewhere else I can go to buy raspberries. They say no, with confidence and pride, they're the only shop around who has ever sold or will ever sell raspberries. Other shops might sell other fruit, sure, but they have a monopoly on all raspberries forever. I ask if they're possibly planning on them selling them again in future? they say they can't tell me that.
on the way home, I encounter someone eating raspberries. I ask and they tell me that they grow their own, they got some seeds from the shop back in The Raspberry Days and kept them. They take me to a field of many beautiful raspberry plants and invite me to pick my own, they're free for all the town to pick whenever they'd like.
someone comes up behind us. It's the shop manager, President of Nintendo Shuntaro Furukawa. he hatefully throws a bob-omb that blows up and kills both of us instantly for stealing 200 trillion dollars worth of potential Raspberry Shop That Doesn't Do Raspberries Anymore profits that they weren't making and then he turns around to the camera with a big thumbs up and says don't do piracy or something ok please
"After they overheard that ICE was at the courthouse to arrest someone, they improperly accessed court databases to determine who was not born in the United States," a DOJ detention filing says. "They then snuck every suspected illegal alien who was at the courthouse out a back door, where ICE, who was waiting in the parking lot for their target to leave the building, could not see them."
Think about what you can do at your job or in your daily life to resist fascism when the opportunity presents itself!
A few months back, you might have read about two Logan City, UT court c… William Joma needs your support for Support Legal Fees for Logan Ci
Here is the link to contribute to their legal fund. They are facing multiple felony charges and I have no info on whether they have any community support at this time. If their actions are something you support, consider helping them out through the aftermath and investigation by the "justice" system
Hey, Bandcamp users. You have probably already heard, but Bandcamp was bought by a music licensing firm, and laid off half its staff "as a cost cutting measure."
I will be downloading everything I purchased from Bandcamp and keeping an eye on it.
In a significant shift of ownership, Bandcamp, the renowned digital music marketplace, has officially transitioned from its previous owner,
EARNEST POSTING. while everyone is still working on new year’s resolutions i want to make sure everyone knows about the FREE serial reader app.
if you are trying to read more classics/public domain works but for whatever reason struggle with incorporating reading into your daily life, or you’re just intimidated by huge books, serial reader is a great tool to make reading more approachable. it works much like dracula daily in that it sends you one excerpt at a time (usually about 10-15 minutes of estimated reading time). awesome for commutes, lunch breaks, quick bedtime story, etc.
it’s very customizable. you can change fonts, themes, and you can even take notes and highlight. you can also sync with other reading apps like goodreads (no storygraph yet……. we can hope!). the base app is completely free, but there is a one-time optional upgrade fee of $2.99 USD if you want some extra features. this is all developed by one guy, so the money goes to supporting the creator - although i’m sure apple takes their cut 😑.
there are a ton of works to choose from, currently something like 800+.
you can now also add your own .epubs to break up your own books into daily serials! very cool, serial reader!
this was the best app i added last year so i just want to pass it on. happy reading! :)
