Ryushiki07’s Higurashi: When They Cry is one of the better-known Japanese doujin visual novel (or “sound novel”) series, with the original eight main entries having been released from 2002-2010. On November 25, 2025, Ryushiki07 posted on X from the account of 07th Expansion (the studio behind Higurashi and subsequent projects) about the novel’s very humble origins (quote and translation courtesy of Automation West):

We sold 50 copies of Higurashi When They Cry at Comiket. We shipped 50 more to mail-order customers pretending it was a mistaken order, offering to mail them the next work for free if they sent us feedback. We were desperate to get even one or two more people to read it.

Higurashi ultimately spawned multiple anime adaptations and a universe of games by 07th Expansion (notably Umineko: When They Cry). Ryushiki07 is now writing the new Silent Hill f game (other people who worked on the “When They Cry” novels are also part of the project). They have come a long way in just over 23 years.

While I have yet to review a When They Cry novel in article form, I posted about learning about a Higurashi phone game here on ECS. Over on The New Leaf Journal, I wrote a vocabulary-focused post prompted by a scene in chapter 7 of the Higurashi novels, syncing my Umineko saves using Syncthing, and a post on the often misguided tendency to diagnose fictional characters with autism prompted by Umineko’s Maria. If you happen to be reading through Umineko, I linked to a good resource listing the novel’s “red” truths. Finally, if you are interested in indie Japanese novels from the 2000s, you may be interested in my reviews of the al|together visual novel localizations, most of which were published in the same period with the same scripting engine.