Ciconia When They Cry opens on a fractured near future Earth, divided into competing political and military alliances circling toward global war, and introduces its entire main cast, six central Gauntlet Knights, essentially all at once rather than easing readers in gradually. This entry pulls from other works in its wider catalog, weaving them into a shared narrative framework that rewards familiarity without strictly requiring it. That density is a deliberate structural choice, one that pays off eventually but demands real trust from readers before it does.
Miyao serves as the story’s central protagonist, one of several young Gauntlet Knights, child soldiers piloting advanced powered armor, who meet at the International Battle Standard Festival and vow to prevent a fourth global war together. That festival itself gets treated as a kind of proving ground, one where these six specifically first cross paths and form the bond the rest of the story eventually tests under much higher stakes. A century after World War III nearly destroyed civilization, this new generation of pilots becomes the public face of a fragile peace that’s already unraveling behind the scenes, pawns in negotiations between powers who see them as replaceable rather than as the heroes the world wants them to be. Naima, one of the six central Knights, gets singled out by the game’s own composer as a personal favorite among the cast. That’s a small window into how the creative team related to their own characters while building the story.
Ryukishi07 wrote the scenario and designed the original character sketches for Ciconia, working under his doujin circle 07th Expansion as the newest entry under the When They Cry banner following Higurashi and Umineko. He’s described the approach here as something closer to Evangelion than his earlier work, a story built to work whether or not a reader wants to actively decode its mysteries, rather than demanding that kind of active puzzle solving the way Higurashi and Umineko both did. The title itself, ciconia, the scientific genus name for storks, reflects how centrally child characters sit at the story’s core, and the Phase 1 subtitle, For You, the Replaceable Ones, names that theme directly. Ryukishi07 has framed Ciconia as partly a message aimed at today’s youth, readers who feel isolated or forgotten. That shapes how directly the story engages with its child soldier premise rather than treating it as pure genre dressing. That structural choice, four total episodes rather than the eight each of Higurashi and Umineko ran, was deliberate too. It was meant to keep the story’s release window tighter so readers wouldn’t lose track of scattered details across a multi year wait between installments. The Japanese script runs past 400,000 characters for this first installment alone.
The opening stretch asks for real patience, and it’s worth being honest about that upfront rather than softening it. Introducing six major characters simultaneously means the first half spends most of its runtime on surface level development spread thin across the whole ensemble rather than digging deep into any single figure. Six major characters getting roughly equal narrative real estate up front also means no single figure gets to anchor the reader’s attention the way a smaller cast typically would. That’s part of why that opening stretch can feel so diffuse before the story actually narrows its focus. Combined with dense, scattered worldbuilding about competing alliances, natural disasters, and geopolitical tension delivered largely through hints and fragments rather than direct exposition, that opening half felt like a real slog to me at points. Piecing together the actual shape of this fractured world takes real, active effort, tracking factions and alliances that never get explained in one clean pass. Readers who enjoy that kind of puzzle box worldbuilding will find real satisfaction slowly assembling the picture. Readers who want a clearer, faster moving setup may find the density trying. That diffuse feeling eases considerably once specific relationships start taking clearer shape, but getting there asks real commitment first.
That patience pays off considerably once the second half kicks in, and the shift in energy is dramatic enough that I found myself preferring the back half outright. The story pivots toward real geopolitical action as the fragile balance between alliances starts actively breaking down, and the character work that felt thin during the ensemble introduction deepens meaningfully as the six leads get pushed into situations that reveal who they actually are under pressure. Watching alliances that felt abstract during the setup suddenly translate into direct consequences for characters I’d only just started to care about gave the second half a momentum the opening never really had.
By the time the story reaches its climax, I came away convinced this ending stands among the strongest individual sequences the entire When They Cry franchise has produced. It’s a devastating, carefully staged combination of music, visual presentation, and emotional payoff that lands with real force specifically because of how patiently everything leading up to it was assembled. That payoff depends entirely on having sat through the slower opening too, since none of the climax’s specific weight would land the same way without the patient groundwork the first half spent building underneath it.
Unlocking after the main story, a set of bonus slice of life scenes for the six central characters does real, understated work deepening affection for a cast that the main narrative doesn’t always have room to fully humanize amid its geopolitical scope. I found that small, optional material worth reading in its own right rather than simple bonus padding. Getting to see these same characters in lower stakes, more mundane situations after watching them under so much pressure earlier gave me a fuller sense of who they actually are outside the geopolitical machinery surrounding them.
Presentation marks a real, visible step forward for the franchise on a technical level. Character sprites, sketched by Ryukishi07 and finished by Remotaro, carry noticeably more detail and polish than earlier entries managed, with Nakao Bōshi handling staging and production alongside them. Backgrounds depicting the various international superpowers’ urban landscapes and the Gauntlet Knights’ own powered armor designs both carry a level of visual specificity earlier When They Cry entries, working with a smaller art team, generally couldn’t afford. Composers Dai, Xaki, Luck Ganriki, and Uni Akiyama return from Umineko, joined by new contributors Gin Kreuz and M.Zakky, with the opening theme performed by Maria Sawada. That score elevates key emotional beats effectively, even if its overall variety feels less expansive to me than what a story of this scope might call for.
Where the package draws its sharpest criticism has nothing to do with the writing itself. The asking price, $39.99 for this first of four planned installments, with no voice acting and no fully unique CG art to distinguish it visually from the franchise’s earlier work, struck me as steep for what currently amounts to an unfinished, cliffhanger ending opening chapter. Ryukishi07 has said the higher price reflects a larger team working on this entry compared to earlier games he largely built himself. Aging staff balancing day jobs and health against the project adds context that makes the cost more understandable. It doesn’t make the price any less steep for a reader deciding whether to commit, though. Witch Hunt, the same translation team behind Umineko’s English release, handled the localization here too, with publisher MangaGamer distributing the Steam version alongside the simultaneous Japanese launch. That price grew more difficult to justify once Phase 2’s development stalled entirely. Ryukishi07 paused work on it during the pandemic in 2020, then confirmed in 2022 and again in 2023 that the story would stay suspended indefinitely, explaining he didn’t want to release a story touching on engineered pandemics and global conflict while those same issues were actively hurting real people. As of this review, there’s no timeline for when, or whether, Phase 2 will actually arrive.
Verdict
Ciconia When They Cry Phase 1 asks for real patience through a dense, slow building opening before rewarding that patience with a back half and ending that stand among the strongest individual sequences the entire franchise has produced, using its fractured, geopolitically tense setting to build toward real emotional and thematic weight once its six leads get pushed past surface level introduction. Its steep asking price relative to length, combined with Phase 2’s confirmed indefinite suspension, make it a difficult recommendation as things currently stand, regardless of how strong the material that does exist actually is. For committed fans of the wider When They Cry catalog willing to accept real risk on a story that may never continue, this delivers a worthwhile, occasionally stunning opening chapter. For anyone hoping for a complete experience, the honest answer right now is to wait and see if it ever gets one. Few visual novels ask this much patience only to justify nearly all of it by the end.
