RollForInitiative said:
NeutralDrow said:
I was half-wondering if I should hold out for the visual novel...I think I'll look up the anime, now, instead.
Which one? There have been many visual novels released for Higurashi already. If you can read kanji, a number of them are available for import, including recent DS releases of several titles.
when people just refer to "the visual novel" they refer to the originals: Higurashi and Higurashi Kai are originally visual novels, the anime and manga are mere adaptations, and then there are spinoff novels that supplement the original eight arcs.
While the manga sticks rather closely to the novels the anime had to lose a lot of details and the original pacing (as a VN series Higurashi was made of four arcs that set up all the mysteries and Kai of four arcs that give the corresponding answers).
And yeah, though once again the anime loses part of the flavor Umineko, the spiritual sequel, is awesome and full of mysteries, even for people who know the whole of Higurashi, since it plays with its structures. Things about the novels' structure that were the big reveals in Higurashi are almost immediately admitted here and then it plays with your expectations.
This time around it's sorta based on "and then there were none", from Agatha Christie. A number of people are stuck for two days on an island, together with a serial killer who seems to be following an esoteric poem. Most are quick to suspect the legendary witch who supposedly haunts the island and whose resurrection the poem is about, but because the protagonist would rather believe the culprit is very much human, he has to figure out all the seemingly supernatural murders before his turn comes. And from there on it becomes a great mindfuck peppered with Phoenix Wright-esque confrontations and all manners of demons, not to mention a thorough deconstruction of whodunits plus a few very unique twists on the usual visual novel structure.
iterally "When Seagulls Cry.") 
