Search - When They Cry, Vol. 4 on DVD

Only For The Patient, And Strong-Stomached

W. Moody | New Mexico | 11/24/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"There are two things that one must know about the WHEN THEY CRY series before one starts watching it: one is its peculiar structure; the other is its penchant for sadism. It is largely the first that has kept me watching this, despite the second.

The series is basically about a 3 day (more or less) series of events in a small (and allegedly demon-haunted) Japanese town called Hinamizawa. The trick of storytelling is that the story is divided into "chapters" of 2-6 episodes, each of which chronicles events in the 3 days- but each chapter's version of the story is to some degree incompatible with the others; events might be slightly, or even completely, different in one "chapter" versus another, and while the cast might not differ much, their behavior and actions usually do- an innocent victim in one "chapter" might be a crazed killer in another, etc. Any interest in the series (unless one really IS a fan of cruelty and brutality) is in trying to find common threads that might make at least some of this coherent.

Disc 4, the subject of this review, is about the middle of the series, and might actually be beginning to give it some structure. The first episode on the disk finishes the "Time Wasting" chapter, serves as prequel and sequel to the rest of the series, and has protagonists who MAY be more reliable witnesses to the beginnings (and end) of the saga, since they're not residents of Hinamizawa. (Nobody who actually LIVES in Hinamizawa thinks objectively or logically, as the rest of the series demonstrates.)

The other three episodes on the disc belong to the "Eye Opening" chapter, which eventually stretches another 3 episodes (on Disc 5). Here we see the beginnings of the longest chapter, which will eventually link up with events from the "Cotton Drifting" chapter of Discs 1-2, though putting a VERY different take on them. But those connections will mostly be made on Disc 5. Here what we see is the back-story on Shion, sister of Mion, and her crush on Satoshi, whose fate has been a mystery the series has closely guarded from the beginning. Here, in this chapter, on Disc 4, is also a graphic torture scene that even I found hard to take (and I wasn't so troubled even by ELFEN LIED; see my review of that one elsewhere on the Amazon site).

I can really only recommend this to those who already have the other discs and are also fascinated by the puzzle- and fascinated by it enough to put up with the series' cruelty and brutality, which begin to escalate on this disc."