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On April 9, 2026, SoulStudio (formerly Sekai e) announced that their LINE chatbot service Soul Chat would be having a collaboration with the popular 07th Expansion Visual Novel franchise When They Cry by releasing chatbots of the cast of Higurashi: When They Cry.
This chatbot service will allow users to interact with the world of Higurashi via their own character and speak to various AI facsimiles of their favorite characters from the original Visual Novel to “progress through quests” and see the story unfold for a fee.
When SoulChat’s Higurashi chatbots release on April 17, LINE users will be able to chat with Keiichi Maebara, Mion Sonozaki, and Rena Ryuugu for two days at a price of 300JPY or ten days for 1,100JPY. There will also be a discounted pack that will allow users to chat with only Rena Ryuugu for ten days at a price of 550JPY.
Currently, according to SoulStudio, these chatbots will only allow users to interact with the cast during the events of Higurashi’s first story arc, Onikakushi-hen. However, the company has stated that future arcs will be implemented on a regular basis until the year 2028. According to the announcement, the characters who users can interact with will also change each chapter.
SoulStudio has previously released similar chatbots for the manga series Orb: On the Movements of the Earth and Dropkick on My Devil, with this Higurashi collaboration being the fourth series of chatbots released by the company and the first time the company has attempted to adapt characters from a Visual Novel.
Fan reaction to the existence of these Higurashi: When They Cry chatbots has almost universally been negative, with most fans seeing it as a betrayal of the franchise and an example of how various marketing decisions over the years have diluted the original story.
As many fans consider the entire appeal of the When They Cry franchise to be human-written stories where the player follows the point of view of the cast, the appeal of these chatbots is limited at best.
SoulChat’s Higurashi chatbots will be available to LINE users on April 17, 2026. While these chatbots will be Japanese exclusive and available only to LINE users, the original Visual Novel franchise that fans fell in love with is currently available in English via MangaGamer.
