Media Favorites Media FavoritesUmineko is a timeloop, murder mystery, fantasy visual novel about a Reddit atheist playing 4D chess with a witch to disprove her existence and save his family from being brutally murdered. Sort of. It's also about patriarchy and the cycles of abuse, reality being subjective, storytelling as a method of communication, identity, and love. It explores these themes with a fascinating cast full of complicated, often terrible characters with compelling arcs and heartbreaking, multi-layered dynamics with each other.
It's an incredible story that has grabbed and moved me on such a unique level. There's been stories I loved obsessively with all of my heart, and stories I found a lot of depth in the narrative and themes of and enjoyed analyzing, but this is the first time they've been the same one. I started calling it a special interest partway through the halfway point, even though I felt awkward doing it, because it had absolutely taken over my free time and life. This story has totally reshaped the way I look at art as both a viewer and a creator, and definitely for the better.
Aveyond is a comedic, anachronistic high fantasy series made in RPG Maker and set in the world of Aia. Spread over hundreds of years, it has a few recurring characters and locations, but each game is relatively self-contained. Most of the games in the series are based on a twist of the chosen one or other common fantasy trope.
It is also the singular most important piece of media in the world to me. Aveyond helped define my life for 15 years: it was my main creative inspiration, a huge source of comfort and fun, and a way I made many incredible connections. I'm not actively obsessed with it right now but it remains dearest to my heart.
"Umineko" is the broad answer here, but if you looked at any of the paragraphs of meta I've been sending my friends lately, you'd know that for better or worse, the specific answer is none other than Erika Furudo.
It started out as a love-to-hate her thing, and then I had to admit that I just love her character and the role she plays in the story. She's a rephrensible villain who makes my skin crawl, an abuse victim groomed into being the worst version of herself that I want better for, and an at-times hilarious character to the point of absurdity. The balance of humor, horror, and tragedy in her is so emblematic of Umineko as a whole and I haven't been able to stop thinking about her.