If you are someone who has been a visitor of the site during it's very early days back in 2019 and 2020, you might remember me writing a few pages related to Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni. To this day I have a whole section dedicated to "When They Cry" on the homepage, largely because I never bothered to reorganize, but also because I thought there would be something more to write about as time went on. What a misprediction that was.

Yes, there was indeed a period of time when I was a pretty avid fan of... let's call it the "07th-verse". While I knew about it for much of the 2010s, my first proper introduction to it was through a former friend back in 2017 with Umineko. I loved the concept, loved the character designs, but I really did not dig the utterly extreme story length. We have a saying in the Serbian language that goes "Ubiti nekog u pojam". There's really no way to directly translate this to any other language, but what matters is one of it's practical meanings: When something/someone drains or demoralizes you to such an extent that you give up or burst.

That's kind of how I felt with the story of Umineko. The sheer length combined with the repetition of events, tropes, and character quirks pretty much soured my experience. "Short but sweet" it certainly ain't, when it probably should've been. Several of the story's high points are dragged down by everything else surrounding them, and I guess the ONScripter engine itself started feeling the same way because it kept freezing at completely random points more and more frequently, forcing me to whip up a script of the last few chapters and read them like a regular book... it's honestly better this way, as you can set your own pace without wearing out your mouse buttons or Space key.

It could've ended there. My overall displeasure with Umineko left an impression that 07th's other stories suffer from the same issues and that I shouldn't bother. Yet, out of basically nowhere in mid 2019 I felt like going through Higurashi as well, to give the series a second chance. Needless to say, I was definitely swept off my feet. Ryukishi's signature length and repetition-oriented writing is still present, but the positives were so much stronger that it felt like a good read regardless. I felt like the character writing was significantly better, the situations they were put in a lot more impactful, and the long period spent building up to the grand mystery actually played into the story's favor, but the most important part is that the story had an absolutely amazing hook.

For those who don't know, narrative hooks are the part of a story, usually very early on, that intrigue the reader so much that they can't help but keep on reading. The first chapter, Onikakushi-hen, is that hook. It is so masterfully done that even I, someone who generally doesn't care about spoilers and even likes them at times, consider it best experienced completely blind. I'd even say that Higurashi would still be an amazing story if it ended on it's first chapter.

Naturally this got me to explore the 07th scene further. Back then, it definitely felt alive across the internet. Story discussions left and right, tons of fan material, an increasing interest in non-WTC related productions like Higanbana and Rose Guns Days, and connections formed with people that I still talk with today. Soon this interest would be revitalized again with the release of Ciconia no Naku Koro Ni's first chapter, Phase One. Personally, it didn't feel as magical as Onikakushi, but overall it did feel like the story was gonna have a mix of both Higurashi and Umineko's elements. The former's heavily character-focused writing and the latter's grandioseness. The move from 640x480 to 1280x720 also felt more fresh. Things were looking good, and people eagerly waited for more.

Then out of basically nowhere a new Higurashi animated series gets announced early in 2020, and as the whole world knows by now, a pandemic would soon flip everyone's lives upside down. Being stuck at home gave a lot of people time to read 07th works I suppose, since this is a period where I saw a lot of new people coming into the scene. The newly announced animation project also played a crucial part. Everybody thought that it was gonna be a redo of the initial 2006 animated adaptation by Studio DEEN, which people have very mixed feelings on. Come mid-to-late 2020 and we finally see what it's all about. It was a trick all along, it's actually a new story that started off with the same beats as Onikakushi to lure us in. We now even know it's name: Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni Gou.

Not to give a full review here, but it felt off. Something about the characters just didn't feel right with the knowledge of what happened in the original 8 chapters. Most other people in the scene were highly excited though, borderline fanboyish I'd say. We wouldn't have to wait long to find out what happens next, as the next season named "Sotsu" instead of "Gou" filled in all the gaps and finished off the story. To say that it was a wild ride of character assassination would be an understatement. I am not trying to be hyperbolic here, you will be doing yourself a huge disservice watching GouSotsu after reading the original story. Everything you knew about the characters, their tragedies and high points, especially for Satoko and Rika, is spat on and twisted around into something even a bad fanfiction wouldn't dare sell off as a legitimate continuation of the 8 chapters.

The run and end of GouSotsu formed some of the first major cracks in the scene. It was a highly divisive release, starting off mostly positively and getting an increasingly negative reputation as the years go by, deservedly so. As divisive as it was, it was still something that really got people talking, right? Sure, but not exactly in the best way considering the ripple effect it had on the scene. Now that GouSotsu is over though, Ciconia can continue full steam ahead, and so people waited.....

.... and waited, and waited, and waited... nothing. Pure silence ever since. Most people in the scene could understand why when it came to 2020 and 2021, the absolute chaos that the pandemic lead to screwed with everybody's scheduling. Ryukishi expressed his 2020 struggles directly as well, and a year or two's wait isn't that much. Hell, Touhou has been on a 2-year schedule for a while now. The production of GouSotsu also understandably delayed things. But both of those eventually got out of the way, 2022 and beyond weren't gonna have any excuses, surely... apparently not, because the Russo-Ukraine war made Ryukishi feel that continuing Ciconia's story "didn't feel right at this time", because a bunch of flying kids with nigh-supernatural oversized gloves definitely have a lot to do with yet another Slavic conflict.

So what is 07th up to now? Well, not much that's all that interesting, mostly small projects that nobody cares about. Any time Ryukishi is asked about Ciconia he does nothing but give a blue-ball answer. It is this blue-balling in combination with the trainwreck that is GouSotsu that killed off whatever life was still left in many parts of the scene. Most people I met in it and myself have moved on for good, and I feel like FloPerfecto's final video does a good job of symbolizing how these repeat disappointments have made us all look elsewhere:

You could say were were "ubijeni u pojam" by 07th.