When They Cry is a deceptively cute psychological thriller/horror anime. The story takes place during June 1983, at the fictional rural Japanese village of Hinamizawa. A teenage boy, Keiichi Maebara, recently into moved into town and makes friends with some local girls. However, almost immediately things begin to unravel and a sinsiter conspiracy theories about the area abound.  When They Cry is based on the dojin visual novel by 07th Expansion.

 There are some things to note about this series as it is rather unique. Unlike most series, When They Cry is divided into a series of arcs, each telling its own story, sometimes contradicting others and sometimes from the perspective of another person. This adds to confusion as to what really happens. While the events and perspectives change several items of the narrative always occur such as the deaths of certain people. Another thing to note is the intro's noise will continue to distort as the series progresses with subtle changes to the opening animation as well.

 
Arcs:

1. Spirited Away by the Demon
2. Cotton Drifting
3. Curse Killing
4. Time Killing
5. Eye Opening
6. Atonement

 Highlights:

The arcs I mostly enjoyed in When They Cry revolved around Keiichi since he, being the complete outsider, has no idea what was going on. Combine this with resetting the conditions every few episodes and it really begins to actually give the effect of being in his shoes somewhat since the audience does not know what is real and what isn't. However, I do also appropriate the other arcs as they give some crucial details about the mystery's surrounding the area.

I also enjoyed the symbology in the opening credits, especially before the title. As mentioned, the opening gets more noise distoration as the series goes along. At the same time the animation changes subtly to have things like a butterfly move slower while flapping its wings further and a retractable roof open further. It goes nicely with the idea that as you watch more of the series you learn more about what's going on while at the same time more inconsistence and problems arise to cloud your vision of what is real. The rest of the intro also has the distorted sound and several scenes have static with contrasts between bright and cheerful and dark and bloody.

The other thing I really enjoyed was the use of the cute characters. The level of violence and psychological torture the characters go under that makes most of them snap starkly contrasts to what most would expect when seeing the cute characters. In addition, while there is a lot of blood and gore, the series uses the tricks from the great horror pictures of the past. A number of such works forget the fundamentals like allowing the audience to visualize things for themselves. For example, very rarely do you actually ever see a weapon hit someone and when you do its only to add emphasis.

 Overall:

I really like dark series like this, especially when they are done well and When They Cry certainly is. However, this anime is extremely bloody and doesn't shy away from showing you anything. FUNimation's age rating of 16+ is completely justified here. The blackish cover they use in the boxset gives a good hint as to the direction the series takes.

Beyond that, due to the arcing nature of the anime it's hard to really give an overview of the series since each arc is pretty well self contained, but at the same time gives a larger picture to the world. While I was a first put off by the constant use of arcs, by the fourth I was kind of disappointed when the perspective switched away from Keiichi as I had began to like seeing different scenerios unfold from his perspective. While I enjoyed the others, especially one in which Shion, a twin sister of one of the four main girls, went insane as it revealed info about a previous plot that was confusing, I wish more than just the first arcs were from his perspective. All of the arcs are good enough to stand on their own, although the foruth arc which is an historic arc taking place before the main series was probably the weakest. In contrast I liked the third arc which seemed that arc seemed to be the most related to, although how related is unclear given the multiple storylines.

The anime does not completely tie up all of the mysteries and indeed seems to create more as it goes along and solves the ones it does. A second season in Japan has already aired and hopefully Funimation will bring that over for those left in the dark.

ComicsOnline gives When They Cry a 4.5 out of 5 bloody hatchets.