A Higurashi Fan’s Guide to Witches
Introduction
If you’re thinking…
“I want to understand the Higurashi Gou theorizing about Bernkastel/Lambdadelta/Featherine, but I don’t want to read all of Umineko.”
“I’ve read Umineko but it was years ago and I need a refresher.”
“I know every Ryukishi07 work like the back of my hand and I want to cackle at just how wrong this poor fool is”
…then I have a guide for you!
If you haven’t read Umineko, I highly recommend you do read it at some point - it’s a masterpiece that may very well change how you think about mysteries and fantasies, or even about the nature of fiction itself.
But rushing through all of Umineko just for Gou theorizing will probably leave you confused, burned out, and disappointed. Umineko is about it’s own characters and mystery, not so much about the three crossover witches in particular.
As such, to preserve the Umineko experience at least a little, this guide contains no spoilers for the core mystery of Umineko.
However, this guide does contain full spoilers for everything about Bernkastel, Lambdadelta, and Featherine, as well as some information about the premise, mechanics, and worldbuilding of Umineko.
If you hate spoilers and want to go into Umineko completely blind, TURN BACK NOW.
This guide is also a reading guide. In each section, I’ll be linking a couple of Umineko scenes and/or short stories that can be read quickly and more or less standalone to get a decent understanding of the character.
Links to Umineko will have two forms. Video goes to the visual novel playthroughs up on LAMBDADELTO’s Youtube channel, which have PS3 graphics and full voices. Text usually goes to the Umineko Let’s Play on the Something Awful Let’s Play Archive. Both are complete and without extra commentary. Hopefully two sources means less chance of future link breakage.
(If you want commentary, the whole SA LP thread is also quite a good read in and of itself. But if you go that route, please still buy the game. It’s easy to get on Steam!)
Finally, note that much of this information will indeed be the same as the wiki, though it’s intended to be more comprehensive and with less spoilers. If you have any quibbles or questions, or if you want citations on where I found any bit of information, feel free to @ or message me. If the issue is glaring enough, I’ll update the guide!
Tag for the whole guide in order
Table of Contents
Witches and Fragments in Original Higurashi
Witches and Fragments in Umineko
Bernkastel
Bernkastel’s Umineko Origins
Lambdadelta
Featherine
Coming Eventually?: This guide does not yet cover Ciconia, because I procrastinated on reading that… by writing this. (Have I mentioned I’ve been drowning in WTC lately?) I’ve heard there are implied connections in Phase 1, but nothing more than that yet anyway.
