Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Ch.1 Onikakushi-hen

Written in June 2023

I tend to like to find reasoning in things, so I occasionally wonder why someone chose the exact medium they did to express the story they wanna tell. On a surface level, I’d mark the route-less visual novel as strange; kinda feels like a budgeted version of a bunch of other mediums. Not that I’d judge someone for going for a budgeted option of anything, mind you, but I guess what surprised me was how clear regardless it was that Higurashi’s writer is a game designer. Or at the very least, an equipped dungeon master; the way even in its most mundane moments Onikakushi manages to rip chunks of substance out of its characters via understanding their psychology through a game is kinda incredible. Obviously, the way it religiously mixes callbacks and narrative parallels between its board game sessions and obscene murder scenes is cute and all, but occasionally a detail would catch my eye that was so visceral, it changed my understanding of the game as a whole.
And honestly...I liked a lot of the downtime. Maybe more than I should have. I think the way Mion and the protagonist are constantly on the same wavelength comedically works really well to personalize our relations to her in a way that made me genuinely upset to see her hurt later on
Lots of cute stuff to wonder aloud about as well, like is the main cast’s obsession with western culture and roleplaying as aristocrats supposed to be some ironic-tragic element to how their lives are conflicted between interests in westernization and traditionalism, or maybe they’ll spin that in a different direction later on? Also hoping we see more positive angles to the beautiful solidarity of the town as well, it’d be sad for them to throw that out for village-conspiracy cult stuff.
Really good first chapter!!! Felt good to see some moments that were clearly iconic to a whole lotta japanese teenagers in the 2000s blind; I think the door scene and its aftermath had the best buildup of tension and little humane nuances yet.
Also, the presentation? Awesome. We love it. Ryukishi's art isn't very traditionally good and tends to get a 'how do I take this seriously' rep that is maybe deserved (but also still only a complaint from the weak), but he sure is genuinely good at expressions. I cannot imagine the way these characters act without contexts like Mion's boisterous smiles, or Rika's vague squiggly stare. The photography does a lot to add texture and power to the words regarding the village, and its inhuman solidarity. I assumed they were stock photos for a while, but nah - they really did go to a remote village in Japan that was interconnected with a real life tragedy involving dam submerging. This is also one of those games where the author just happened to find the best music ever on a royalty free music page, so yeah. Cool.
So uh, yeah. Real good. Loved it also i think this ryukishi guy is a pervert but im sure yall noticed that already

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Ch.2 Watanagashi-hen

Written in June 2023

Ryukishi wasn't lying, this really was a lower difficulty but much more vicious. Found this chapter fundamentally weaker on a basis that most of its mysteries are built on 50/50s, and said mysteries have emotional hooks built in something that feels cheaper than chapter 1's subject matter. Not only this, while I loved chapter 1's downtime, I started to feel fatigue to the depth of the character's tropes. They just didn't get as much out of the downtime in this chapter we hadn't seen already... THAT SAID, this certainly isn't a betrayal of what made Onikakushi special for me; the sincere sympathy and belief in seeing the good in its characters shone through for me. Horror as a means to process our trauma owns
Oh by the way he DID sexualize the characters more so I hope we lock up Ryukishi and beat him up with hammers or something IDK.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Ch.3 Tatarigoroshi-hen

Written in July 2023

…..
Damn.
Maybe the most emblematic of what Higurashi is plays out here; our early chapters introducing us a character who is a 30 year old who goes “btw im a pedophile :3 just kidding” like 5 times, only for the second half of the chapter to barrel into sincerely well handled and discussed topics of child abuse. And whether or not this makes it more or less frustrating that these tropes are present at all, I think Ryukishi expresses teenager-dom very succinctly on this cut. The section in which Keiichi argues with himself over if there’s anything he could do to save his friend for hours straight, tossing and turning as he remembers every single little limitation his lack of agency can't afford him is one of my fav scenes in the series so far. That sense of hysterical powerlessness keeps growing and growing and growing until it's suffocating. And at the climax of that suffocation, we realize that the world is rejecting us, and we couldn't break through the surface of its hulking mass no matter how we try.
There’s something to be said about how this chapter plays with the built-up expectations and concepts the series plays with already. Keiichi begging for the supernatural concepts that have haunted him to work in his favour, only for them to be most clearly fake when he needed them feels so right. Like this supernatural world will only become grounded in reality when he wants to break through a reality that is just too brutal to the people he wants to love. And when that supernatural unreality finally reels its head to work in its favour...He snaps. Fuck, dude. Ugh.
Ultimately, this chapter just felt earnestly lived through to me. The trio of Keiichi, Mion, and Rena as perspectives of strong-armed naivete clashing with someone who has been through some shit a bit too young and has the burden of having to know too much. I’ve met both of them many times in my life, and probably been both of them over the course of my life. At the center of this chapter of course is Satoko, who's trauma is painted excellently through so many angles. To be blunt, this character's dialogue is fucking hard to read this time around, for all the right reasons. This is where Ryukishi being a social worker was first visible to me; he's definitely seen what a child's panic attack looks like, and knows how ugly it is.

That's not to pretend the series' caviats are subdued this time around; there's still a ton of pacing issues, repetitions and overexplanations that show the humbleness of the series' Komiket 100 yen origins. The part in which a character being revealed as a sexual assault victim in conjunction with a wacky horror game stinger sound effect felt a little insensitive to me, but the ripples of that event existing in the plot's canon are astute and mature. There's also the ending of this chapter, which I had heard was controversial, and uh, yeah. I get it lmao. Ripped us out of the tightly knit sequence of events surrounding Keiichi in a way that screams intentionally dissatisfying, all the while smashing us over the head with a million genuinely tantalizing questions...I think I like it, honestly. Every single thread left loose end makes me think that if these are interestingly answered later on, I'll simply have to respect the fuck out of that decision to cut it short here.
Personally there's a lot to resonate and fiddle with in my head in this chapter. Uncomfortable to read shit, educated shit. Can't say that nearly as much about the first two entries. Caviats can't change that Higurashi believes and is fighting for something. Its anger, pain, and wishful thinking are so razor sharp, our gazes were always glancing in the same horizon.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Ch.4 Himatsubushi-hen

Written in July 2023

This one smelled a bit too much like cigarettes for my taste. Most damning thing I can say about it is that every chapter up to this point is sincerely compelling of its own merit--not just as an overarching mystery--yet this one is entirely flat and running on pastiche in comparison. But the ending sequence intertwines with the player's own experience rather memorably, and I am just fucking sentimental to this series already so Who's To Say If It's Good Or Bad
Anyways that chapter was two minute long so since I'm out of things to say about it, I might as well move on to the series as a whole - now that I'm done w/ questions arc and whatnot. My friend group has personally read the entire story out loud together, which is a dizzying thing to plan for a series this long and spiraling, I can't help but think that razor sharp attentiveness and required focus on every line in the VN ultimately has turned into something positive. It makes it blatantly obvious how overwritten and repetitive Ryukishi prose is for sure, but I also can't help myself from appreciating how that same repetition can play into its feverish world-gone-slow horror. Wow, this is like, the best genre to be bad at editing down your scripts for! Just feels distinct to me that I've never really felt this involved with a cast of characters in my life before - and equally never imagined getting into this series would be such an ordeal. I choose the word ordeal both due to the direct nature of how fucking unbelievably long this series is, but also afflicted by the nature of its 20 years of fandom history suddenly being placed onto my lap. Haven't felt this culture shocked from dipping my toes into a sub-culture since I played a Touhou game for the first time when I was 14; speaking of which, I was surprised to hear this series was already so popular in 2004 during the after-party, having polls that garnered ten thousand+ votes! It's all a lot of words to say that my experience with When They Cry is already weighty. Something that imagining the throughlines of has ended up becoming a part of my day to day thoughts - and it's understandable no matter how technically early I am in the series; I mean, dude... Just from these first four chapters, this entry is close to hitting a 500 000 word count. And yet...95 hours invested into this, my passion for the concoction of themes wafting through this series remains burning.

Why do I read Higurashi?
...The answer was simple. I've had my fill of polished styles.
Then why do I read Higurashi?
The answer was simple. Getting into something easier to parse would be boring.
So...why do I read Higurashi?
To be honest, I probably wouldn't mind reading something easier than this.
Basically, it was just that the tears would water my heart, which was withered with boredom.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Ch.5 Meakashi-hen

Written in August 2023

Ryukishi kills me and murders me and sends me to the evil torture dungeons for not hearing him out on Chapter 2.
I'M SORRY, OKAY? I'M SORRY.
This is a pretty decisive chapter for Higurashi as a series, I’d say. This whole time we’ve spent seeing small but pointed glimpses into the mind of Fucked Up Anime Girls, but for the first time we actually pierce deep into the mind of one of those. It’s exactly decisive because, well…people are bad at writing women. Especially the fucked up ones. This whole time I felt this series was surprisingly intelligent in how it conveyed a character’s past, consciousness, and trauma through their actions, but if the inside of their head was filled with the sort of condescension and misunderstanding of a teenager’s intelligence this sort of thing is wrought with, it’s game over. So…does Higurashi have the sauce?
Yeah. sure. it does
It just struck me how the writer would never allow these characters to stagnate or to become less than intimately alive and conscious human beings. From the very beginning of this journey through the character’s mind, all of their actions are so sharp with intent. An incoherent evil laugh that rings insanity? She did it because she had to force herself to keep making noise, to keep up an act, because being this person is hard. Being someone who hurts people is hard. When the only coping mechanism you have left is to stop seeing your hands as yours, and you dehumanize yourself until you see your actions as some narrative you’re following.
Fate has been contextualized and re-contextualized over and over in this plot, but this one hit me most personally. We have a million opportunities to challenge fate every minute, but it’s so easy to stagnate. Once you’ve already crossed the line, you’ve already accepted that this is what you are now. There’s no point in reaching out to anyone anymore. This is what’s left for me, so I’ll keep going until I’ve fallen into hell.
It is also the first time I've felt confronted in this series having actual explicit depictions of deranged violence against children - you'd think it'd take us faster to get here with how people talk about the series - and like, yeah. The violence of children being used to push character development further DOES feel gratuitous, but it's also so anti-satisfaction that I don't think anything here yet froths in sadism... It is sad though. It made me SAD
This chapter is just sad. It is the saddest Higurashi ever made me feel. this is the saddest shit ever. The pointed picture of twisting self-identity swirling into something that chokes us out is just so much. The final moments of this story kill me they kill my ass so dead

I just wanted someone to save me, someone to rip me off this path that I dredge through the mud to the other side of, because I can’t see my legs anymore in this grime.

That’s probably the most interesting component of the psychology here; the strong depiction of how our protagonist has lost a sense of self-control. Of course she couldn’t stop herself once she got started, because she has already dulled and desensitized her mind to tolerate what she sees her hands doing. That in combination with a sincerely good depiction of the sort of upbringing that would lead to someone being desensitized in the way she did; born into Yakuza, her mind attempted to be scrubbed into learning to be subservient by religious boarding school. Infected by dangerous traditionalist ideas of paying for actions via atonement - and forcing others to atone. Violence is justified via narrative to the people who brought her up, so all she had to do to justify violence was to narrativize herself until she was no longer human. You gotta appreciate the simple aesthetic choice of how after facing the generational cycle of atonement from such a young age, the aesthetic of nail cleaving has become so twisted in how she performs it on others.
Everything that’s every been pointed about Higurashi froths up into something so unbelievably aggressive and nihilist.
The prosed 5000x over perpetual theme of “maybe these characters would be able to sort out these issues if they spoke to each other” reaches such an obvious climax here; our protagonist is the perfect candidate to fall into immortality, because she was exiled. Ex-communicated.
Lastly wanna add that while I'm not exactly sure where this plot is going to go, if the direction its mystery is going is intentionally trying to be a message about how not one person is to blame for the issues we face, then this chapter really conveys that direction perfectly. In her intense rage, our protagonist hurts Satoko repeatedly, not realizing that she is perpetuating the violence against the Houjou family. The curse of Hinamizawa is systemic.
You can paint a lot about the direness of a situation through the lens of teenagers, where we're at our most emotionally sensitive states; Meakashi shows us that what sends us to off the edge is not being allowed to be ourselves. Fuck, dude. I’m gonna be mourning this for like a week

Anyways I personally want to put Ryukishi on blast for a bit. I wanted to look at an interview with him to know why the fuck he was like this, and found this, in which he said:
"The Question Arcs are all Bad Ends. Starting with Meakashi-hen even though there are still some mysteries left… *laughs* I am going to move towards a relieving and healing ending. The last arc will be the final."
YOU'RE A SICK FUCK, DUDE. THIS IS NOT UPLIFTING. I'M SICK OF YOU, DAWG. I WANT IT SO OVER FOR YOU

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Ch.6 Tsumihoroboshi-hen

Written in October 2023

I think if there’s anything I wanted to revise a little about earlier entries, I think I’d specify I exaggerated a bit about how flawed Higurashi is. Maybe defensively, almost; like I’d have to elaborate to the sort of ppl who heard my glowing praise of the series’ strongpoints that it can actually be very well paced and filled with brevity when it wants to. But uh, dude…this is like, the most fucked arc in the series, lmao. Something something ‘Scuffed media fans when they encounter a real 8/10’. Higurashi at its most and least meathead, at its worst paced and least subtle. Sheer contrast of some of the most bitterly real depictions of cyclical mental illness fighting against bonkers wild shonen tone. The transformation of the series from a well maintained hatchet to the hemorrhaging of a blunt object. But we still love it, everyone does. Let’s try and grapple with why.

Starting off, it’s immediately apparent and important how much intelligence and respect is given for Rena’s mental health. The way the guilt complex and privilege guilt swirls into a maelstrom in her brain is painstakingly real. I found it poignant how near the end of the plot, she plainly states to herself that she felt like she was the saddest person in the world when her dad was being courted - considering she spent the entire first half of the arc denying that out of feeling she had it too well off. Rena is a lavished depiction of how a concoction of untreated mental health issues can allow for someone - particularly someone who is consistently portrayed as a sharp, mature figure - to downward spiral when there are no reliable adult figures in her life. The recontextualization of her silly little persona she’s developed over the series are so sharp, I’m surprised I didn’t expect a lot of them; I think I genuinely learned things about mental health from this 2005 visual novel! I also got a little annoyed when Steam gave me an achievement of her doing an evil anime yandere face at the end of a chapter about her being traumatized; man…this series’ distributors really don’t fucking understand it, huh?

All that being said, a frustration sorta crept into my view as the chapter went on…you’re gonna have to forgive me if this is a bit too cynical of a criticism. But…did anyone else feel that the way Rena dealt with Rina felt too easy? Like…I think depicting Rena as a victim of childhood divorce leaving her with a sense of opaque guilt is very grounded and spoke to the people I was reading this with. Not only that, but the way Rena’s father was debilitated by their own adult-problem depression, leaving Rena to deal with her mental health afflictions on her own is also a very effective expression of one of the core tenets of this series - the importance of healthy upbringing of teenagers. And Rina as a figure that makes Rena feel unwelcome in her house is depicted with heart wrenching detail in its prose! But for her to be the instigator, the one that puts Rena on the spot to commit murder, suddenly feels less brutally real than everything that had happened up to this point. It felt a little too much like the plot was speedrunning in order to bring the central point of Rena making the wrong decision - which is a great central conflict, mind you - but I wish it got even a little more time, especially considering what would happen later. While the first half of the chapter went too fast, I think the second half went way too slow! Once again, the ways that Rena’s arc consistently both shockingly and subtly uses her own misunderstandings and assumptions about Hinamizawa to make us question our own predetermined viewpoints of the town is very succinct. But the way that it will bring something up, outline it, then say it in a less subtle way to make sure you get it ends up making the second half drag so much. I got it, Ryukishi. Something tells me that the people who like this chapter more than me probably read it faster than me. And despite all of this, something tells me it’d be wrong to dwell on all this. I’m going to try and find the right words to convey why.

Despite all of this, the chapter still worked for me. I have not been mentally well recently. I feel like a trainwreck. And when I sat down, surrounded by my friends, to read through Keiichi accepting Rena for everything, I cried. Even as my mind screamed that Keiichi being able to forgive and move past Rena doing this felt a bit contrived, I think the series’ own ruleset plays to this strength! The lowkey morbidity of Keiichi being able to move past a murder so fast works in favour of how he is the same person he was in other arcs - he is still desensitized to violence. 140 hours in and it truly felt like we reached a climax.

“......We all……. forgave each other for our sins for the first time.”

This chapter is also tripping over its words, trying to find the best way to phrase the contradictory idea of atonement. A traditionally sensical set of morals will never protect every single person who deserves kind treatment.

“...Sins are sins.
You can’t just get rid of them.
You have to carry them for the rest of your life.
I know that’s the fate of a sinner.
…If you don’t want to live like that, don’t be a sinner. I understand that logic, too.

…But then… how are sinners supposed to live…?”

I cried when Keiichi expressed how difficult it is to move on from your own childhood mistakes; the way that trauma glues itself to every inch of your past memories and makes you want to perform every menial way to find a "fresh start" was palpable pain. Also I'm like 99% sure this character is autistic from how he talks about his school experience no I will not take rebuttals ^_^ don't talk to me. Keiichi grappling with cosmic hypocrisy as he challenges his own close mindedness, while often repetitively reiterated, is still fantastic. Being in the head of these character is so enthralling as we see them challenge their own viewpoints and double down regardless. Genuinely wondering if some of the lines in Onikakushi regarding him being unable to turn around are meant to be PTSD of that one night. Love this shit mwa
Just a general testament to how baked in small, quiet sadness this series has become. Keiichi and Mion being able to quietly discuss how to help Rena with each other are some of my favourite scenes in the whole thing. Mion’s ordeal-filled upbringing working with Keiichi’s 6 arcs of wisdom finally giving him enough hindsight to realize where he went wrong blooms into the first true maturity these characters are able to convey. We’re getting there, we’ll escape this maze with no exit if we keep going like this.

And like, how do I even grapple with the finale. Dude. The cartoon tonal whiplash of a schoolroom takeover (which must hit harder in Japan considering they don’t just do this with guns) spiraling into some wacky climactic movie action scene where every character gets a one liner. Ooishi kicks a dude in the balls during this. Dude. Keiichi grabs a bomb off a table and has an anime showdown clash on a rooftop under the moon. Kinda disappointed in them using the moon as a lead motif for this climactic scene rather than playing into the evening cicada aesthetic to be H. I just really didn’t expect this kind of drama in a series that had put so much emphasis on utterly grounded fear!! It’s…well written on a technical level? Thematically relevant to the series? The worst I can say about it is that the rooftop scene needed an editor? But I feel like it makes sense that this would be utterly hard for me to swallow…

At the end of the chapter, Ryukishi states plainly that he feels like a bad writer for needing all these words to say such a simple thing. Reach out to your friends. Talk to people. There always has to be a better way than accepting defeat. I’ve lived this moral before, and I can say that I know exactly why finding the perfect words takes 160 hours of stumbling. Because there aren’t perfect words. It’s why we have to forgive Rena for doing the things she did; most people won’t find the perfect words to show people this is the simple outcome for their whole lives. I want to say as undramatically as I can that this chapter - and series as a whole - is very flawed, but has maybe more spirit in its soul than I think I could ever put to pen. I’m just thankful someone did their best to try and say it

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Ch.7 Minagoroshi-hen

Written in February 2024

YAY!!! SCUFFED HIGURASHI IS BACK!!!
Anyways, we unfortunately ran into a lot of complications finishing this one, so it took us nearly 5 months to finish it. It's a little difficult for me to write something comprehensive about it as a result so here's some scrambled notes
-Rika's internal monologue is fantastically written with all those spikey unchallenged mental thought processes that Rena, Shion. and Keiichi already displayed to seemingly even more extreme extents. I think this is some of the most linearly I've related to a Higurashi protagonist; indomitable fate as an allegory for isolating personal dilemma
-Rika and Hanyuu's dynamic is fantastic and really paints the upper consciousness recognizing that cycles are self induced; the anti social isolative behavior that abuse puts us into the mindset of often results in us being unaware of how to actually reach out to escape from the cycle. That doesn't stop the mind from continuing to think anti-socially, though, you need years of thoughtful work to make what is represented as Hanyuu's viewpoint dissipate
-Really, everything involving these two in this chapter is just really realllyyy good. Rika ended up my favourite character in this series by the end of the chapter - which is an impressive jump for how much weight some of the other characters have had full chapters building to

Then there's the rest of the chapter - you know, the whole middle section. It's complicated to discuss the whole "Keiichi becomes a political activist" arc because it's some of the most hilariously repetitive in prose this series has ever gotten. I now understand that the "pacing issues" people discuss for this series has less to do with the moment to moment repetition being a little flat at times (an honest editing mistake) and more to do with whatever the fuck answers arc is smoking.
The thing, though - in contrast to chapter 6, where I don't think there's any meaningful justification for the middle portions containing so many repetitions focused on explanation of explanation - is that interfacing with child protective services actually kinda needs repetition. To sincerely display what it even means to do a protest of a socio-political faculty is to also portray the brick walling nature of working with the stubborn old men who run these facilities. Higurashi would not have as much inherent meaning in its emphasis on how we need to reach out for help - that there is always help no matter how pessimistic we believe - if it could not show how hard it is to reach out for certain problems. When your living conditions are designed to destroy you, your brain is conditioned by that design into giving up. So how do we help the people who are destined to be destroyed? The answer is that there aren't perfect systems in place for those who fall through the cracks, we have to fucking work for it.

It's frustrating, though...these chapters are clearly not just supposed to be political thinkpieces, they still show a lot of signs of wanting to carry the tensity of the horror sequences from this series too. You can't have your cake and eat it too with this style, though. I particularly felt confused by the chapter's frequent positing that Satoko can be mentally "broken". When Keiichi first says something about this in Chapter 3, I interpreted it as a personal flaw of Keiichi, considering how much the series seems to want you to believe in the recovery of a human being's psyche.. Obviously it is worrying that she's in imminent danger of child abuse, but I think the chapter repeatedly ushering the idea they're afraid of her being permanently traumatized - rather than focusing on imminent, immediate trauma - feels out of touch with the rest of the narrative to me. And I'm not sure if this would require that much tweaking as a narrative point to contain genuine tense weight; beyond better editing and just...less words, Keiichi as a protagonist just needs to have some genuinely interesting thoughts in his internal dialogue. He's such a mouthpiece at this part of the story lol
Also can't lie - I generally dislike when people appraise things with a sorta indefensively awful criticism - I think it usually makes people look shallow when for example, they're like "it's problematic but i like it" about something. But like, while I get what that one scene in angel mort where Keiichi lectures the otaku about why 3D girls matter - genuinely important thing to remind the more cautionary members of your audience, might've confronted some teenagers in the 2000s for realsies. But like, at least in a bubble, the pervert joke character shows up to the activism rallies, and is like "satoko's uncle shouldn't abuse her those thoughts are only okay in your head" is so like, uh oh man. What have I gotten myself into etc etc.

I think the worst thing I can say about Minagoroshi is that sometimes I felt like I didn't like it, I just agreed with it. I don't want to leave off on a negative note, though, so I'll just say I think that despite all of this nagging I have for these past 2 chapters, it's clear to me that Higurashi does things in a very special way. We all recognize that this series operates on a "show hope and joy and love earnestly so the pain can hurt more later, and vice versa" narrative process, and that this is not unique but it is absolutely used in a uniquely high quality fashion here. But what I think is most interesting is how Chapters 6 and 7 weaponize the tone of the up-beat silly club days from the first half of Onikakushi - inversing the subversion. The good old' days that Keiichi and friends thought was lost, but we've reclaimed it, and we can fight back with that reclamation. Piercing through the psychological horror overtones with the warmth of an idealized past brought into reality. I naturally had some initial aversion to the bonkers tonal whiplash of Tsumihoroboshi, But I think this chapter's ending really set in stone for me that there is a textural uniqueness to this shit that you can only realize is even a possibility to write into your story after writing it for four years.
Plus, like, that post-credits is some shit I can't talk about eloquently. Ryukishi is a psycho for coming up with the iron cross in her character design. Amazing to see a series that spends so much time dwelling on very social issues actually start cutting to the roots of it; it acknowledging how many of these issues are rooted in fascism is all I needed to hear to be sold on Answers Arc.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Ch.8 Matsuribayashi-hen

Written in May 2024

WOOOOO SCUFFED HIGURASHI IS.... not back??? Huh?
Ppl warned me about this chapter for months, and I went into it expecting it to be the most ambition-lofty, but ultimately flawed and skewered one yet, but I think it's just..my favourite in the whole series? Funny how that worked out.
Don't fuck with the idea that this is a downgrade from Tsumihoroboshi in the slightest - in fact, I think that episode's lead takeaways would be much more shallow without the extensions that these last two chapters offer... Rena and Keiichi's story in Tsumihoro lays the foundation to say "talking to people is important, so you can form a protective network to solve your problems". But you look at a character like Rena, and what her problems are, and the issue isn't solved when you form the support network - it's what you do with it. In Higurashi, her brain is ill, and in real life, we have some things for that. So through the lens of Higurashi's most doomed by the narrative character, Minagoroshi shows the long-term consequences of realizing you need help too late, and having to rebuild a lot of your own life. It portrays what this is like through a grounded setting (the monotonous and repetitive agony of working with getting support from a social service), and then Matsuribayashi finalizes this through a fantastical scenario that basically says "this is the amount of effort, learning, work, and sheer miracle required to save someone's life, truly", while maintaining the sheer optimism that we can all find at least some of this, somewhere.

And what Takano represents in contrast to this is an excellent textural depiction of the un-healed adult, the average person who did not find this luck; pushed out of the system since birth, the only emotional response is for one to slowly grow closer to a unique brand of sociopathy - a recognition that the networks we need to interface with to survive are formed on the back of hundreds of years of unresolved hatred towards humanity. And so we shield ourselves. Walking through rooms of adults that fundamentally live to work against you, trying to find where you fit. And of course there's no place for you, you were never supposed to exist. I both deeply emotionally resonated with her perspective; I felt seen in the act of relying with the people who hate you, because without the perfect luck to find the perfect support, who is even left? Perfect vignettes of disassociating into the past as your present pushes you away, despite fighting to live in that present. The antagonist of Higurashi is someone who mirrors the trauma of the main cast in a thousand ways, but simply never found the luck to resolve it, and stagnated into becoming another obstacle into the unhealed children's ways. For a reader like me, I found my own relating perfectly sandwiched between Rika and Takano, because in between them is the cross-road that most of us really are at - we're all trying to heal, and we're making steps, but still have a million things to diceroll sorting out..

Lots of really fun and hysterical caricatures depicting how those unhinged adults think and act like. The old men talking about how we're making the best breakthroughs in science since the lobotomy are better than perfect paintings. That whole swirling abuse cycle of Takano becoming a worse person because of her obsessed grandfather, and her grandfather being genuinely mistreated into isolation is such a poignant spiral of self-satiating stagnation. Her story gets to so smartly blend the past abuse and the present negotiation with potential abusers as a cycle. It feels natural, it feels like the sort of parallels you recognize in your own life, it feels like a personal narrative.

This is where Higurashi has truly and finally captured the endgame of its themes of greyness and forgiveness of all: to showcase moral goodness for what it is, a privilege. It can confidently call Rika's good ending a miracle, because it exists in spite of the millions of people that maintains the system that pushes thousands of people into sociopathy, that radicalizes Takano into fascism. Keiichi's group of friends can escape the cycle, and find help through grander combined knowledge, but the entire world isn't that lucky, so it has always formed a worldwide cycle of sociopathy to this point. Higurashi is the cycle of civilization itself rupturing the collective knowledge towards supporting the vulnerable. I have a long history of dark authoritative abuse in my life, so I've been preaching this shit for a long time, but I have to hand it to Ryukishi that I can't help but imagine his words must've broken through and explained this stuff properly to at least some teens out there. "The brain is an organ that can fail" feels so right as a way to describe it

Even the infamously pace-breaking Fragments sequence is like...both more time-efficient and traditionally fun to read than Rena flipping through scrapbooks, or Minagoroshi's Activism arc. There's definitely some filler-y recapping here and there - I'm not trying to deny that this chapter isn't even a little bit スロプcore - but most of it is short & sweet and I appreciate the atmosphere. Like yes, I wasn't presented any new info from that random Rena one, but it still got me thinking about how great this series has been... I think it's really effective in how it retells four years worth of storytelling, because what's missing creates the tone: four years of Takano just utterly failing to connect to other people. The tension building up between Takano and Irie over this time, and so little of it being released the closer we get to present times rules. Irie's speeches also just utterly rip. Tomitake underrated Matsuribayashi glow-up btw that dude had like NO lines of interest before this chapter lol. Shoutouts to there being multiple of these that are like "when is our shining knight of armor gonna show up" about keiichi and then he just had literally no presence in the final subchapter btw LOL

There's a lot to say about the final fight sequence, cuz it is a lot. Insane shit, stupid shit, combines Ryukishi's intimate prose in the way he describes the raw fear factor of military weaponry with some hilariously dipshitty Akasaka shonen antics. Glad Higurashi canonically operates on old Guilty Gear air throw rules. I don't think anyone buys that some nameless grunts were gonna take Shion out of the story after all this, so there's not any real tension here - but I also don't mind the victory lap trash I guess. Can't say it's great, but I will say that after spending 900k words worth reading up to this point imagining Hinamizawa's layouts in my head, so all the tense running away intertwines really well with the series' consistent horror making me want to imagine escape routes and ways to get out of bad situations for all these previously explored areas for so long. It left a lot of imaginative stuff in my brain, cuz my brain just feels like it's been to the torture dungeons before, it's been to the mountains, it's been in the Institute. It's just genuinely not anything of value at all lol. Slop but immersive slop.

The ending sequence really did work for me, though. The final sequence confronts that Higurashi is a fantasy - it is the perfect ending for exactly ten people, leaving the surrounding world unchanged. There will always be a cycle of people everywhere bringing other people into their own misery, people falling through the cracks, but I think we'd all drown in ennui if we didn't restrict our fantasies to hoping the best for our friends, I guess. It's an immaturity, but a necessary immaturity, one that kids could not function without. The adorably bittersweet secret final tip revels in this, through showing a perfect world for Takano - which I think helped me stumble into my final feelings about what it even means for Higurashi to be fantasy.

A lot of stories are structured in the sense that it's natural to remove pieces off the playing field once they've done their part; Higurashi sees through this, refusing to let go of any of its characters that are 'complete'. It'd much rather let the reader imagine a world where Takano has to actually deal with the aftermath of all of this, navigate adult life, and actually get better. Equally as it is in a sense holding Takano accountable, it holds Hanyuu accountable for...existing. She's done her part, but she can't leave yet - after 8 chapters of putting of these characters shifting blames on eachother, Higurashi equates taking yourself out of the picture for the greater good as contradictory. It equates narrative suicide as literal suicide. Higurashi, as a fantasy, wants you to imagine in optimism - imagining that every character that is both flawed or complete still has an entire life ahead of them to figure out what they need to do. You have one too.

I think in a time of my life that has kinda sucked, I was kinda hoping I'd feel a bit more catharsis getting through such a long series, and finally completing it, but there was never a moment where I definitively felt like I accomplished something. That's okay, I think. Hanyuu leaves us off on the note of quietly thinking about how the mindset she's taken in order to gain a perfect world, rather than satiating her, left her wanting more. We should always ask for greater, I think. Keep fantasizing.

~ 📆 ~

Anyways, genuinely thank you so much to anyone who reads through all the stuff I've put on this site about Higurashi so far, it is all under-edited nonsense scribblings from someone who read a 1m word vn in the most insane way possible and is dying from the hysteria of it all. But I'm just happy to share my feelings on something that touched my heart closely with anyone - even if it's a friend who is reading this after I sent it to them! You would be betraying my heart not to read this far, and I'm still thanking you!!!! If you somehow are the type of person who would read this much text and still want a shallow reward after all of this, here is my definitive HIGURASHI TIER LIST

"This stole my heart and I love it" tier: Matsuribayashi, Meakashi
"Totally beautiful expression of pain and loss type beat" tier: Tatarigoroshi, Onikakushi
"We'll get to it later" tier: Saikoroshi
"SCUFFED but sometimes powerful" tier: Minagoroshi, Tsumihoroboshi
"Has its moments" tier: Watanagashi
"Has one moment but its rly good" tier: Himatsubushi

I liked the whole series. I loved this whole thing, and going on this journey especially along friends definitely helped me through some hard times, keeping me positive, keeping me dreaming about the better futures. Now, it's time to go to July (imagine this is about something more important than a metaphor for consuming more content. imagine it's about going outside)

Higurashi Daybreak

Written in May 2024

And so, Higurashi is over. Done. There's an epilogue left but y'know. We got to the End. And I think maybe the most immediately gratifying part of this ending is like...we can truly bask in being apart of the subculture now. Like, if the ending wasn't enough of an intrinsic reward in of itself, I always knew that once I was standing at the top of the hill, I could look down on some exotic trash lining the surroundings of this series. Playing Daybreak - a collab between the genius minds of Twilight Frontier and Cavia - might as well have been the perfect embodiment of a winning trophy for my group finishing the series. And so here it is...an arena fighter that kinda plays like a baby version of Kid Icarus: Uprising that has like, completely non-functional online. I consider watching this thing light on fire under the pressure of 4 people playing it from across the continent a sweet enough reward

ooishi's grapple game goes crazy

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Rei

Written in June 2024

This is where I enter the domain of content not everyone is going to go out of their way to experience, so this will take a bit more of a guide-like approach.. If you want my honest advice on which parts of Rei and Hou+ to read, Saikoroshi is absolutely valuable - a genuinely important send-off to the series - and Hinamizawa Bus Stop is like, interesting. Good preservation of the original script that got extended into a whole series, even if it's just okay in a bubble. The rest vary from mixed at absolute best to just completely awful..

Hirukowashi has that kind of OVA stank where it's doing skits that entirely rely on established traits of the characters; any meaningful traces of character development further in is also not gonna show up. A very bad taste in my mouth to go back to Hanyuu being bodiless right after finishing Matsuribayashi rly. Despite everything, I think you could seriously justify this being a worthwhile read IF
A: You know the rules of Mahjong semi-extensively or have read this alongside someone who plays Mahjong ranked ladder
B: have an interest in extended SHMUP history and or want to learn if Mion Sonozaki has canonically beaten a Touhou extra boss or not (if you're this far into a fucking higurashi writeup you probably do)
You need both tho. If you don't have both it's utterly futile. It's very funny to read an entire Higurashi arc that is so like...straightforwardly childish in nature - reading pretty much exactly like a comedic slice of life episode in a shonen - while still assuming the audience knows how to watch competitive Mahjong.

Batsukoishi on the other hand just has absolutely no value at all I think? It's like the Onikakushi skit about Keiichi sexually harassing all the girls but then he loses and gets sexually harassed but like, significantly more emphasis on it being hentai. Don't read this!

Saikoroshi is one I'm actually pretty conflicted on - attempting to weave Higurashi's most complex concepts into a soothing and satisfying conclusion is hard, when the series hadn't even had time to think about these things before. On one hand, I do really appreciate acknowledging the way Rika as a character has existed up to this point as flawed - and how beautifully it silently wraps a bow on why Rika didn't remember Takano killing her after everything. It is a meditation, and to some extent rejection of Higurashi's fantasy - to reconcile with the limitations of our own chasing of a perfect world. Rika spent a hundred years without truly living, metaphorically expressing that isolated and hopeless lifestyle she took as like cheating fate. It's giving her one last chance, because we all deserve some time to snap out of our own fantasies, we have to actualize and start from somewhere. That somewhere just comes with a price.

Due to the sheer conceptualism on play here, though, it is also Higurashi at its least confident; spending a lot of time positing philosophy about goodness and badness, when it could really be saying something a lot simpler. It gives me the same vibe as a lot of previous anime sci-fi stuff that spends a lot of time dwelling on morality for fictitious concepts that don't really add anything, other than displaced doubt towards the idea there can be any objective good in the world. This honestly might be a bit cynical of me - especially because it explicitly rejects that notion near the end, it just spent a lot of time brooding in it beforehand - I just kinda viewed the series as above this sort of tone for a long time. It could be using it for less powerful and ultimately relatable reasons. Saikoroshi manages to get a LOT out of what it's saying. It's validly weighed down by years of choosing the self over others and selfishness, attempting to see through the noise of when choosing yourself is a good thing. The Bernkastel stuff was particularly effective as a way of conveying the disassociation and disconnect of feeling like you are living through double lives. I ended up relating to it in my own way as someone who's spent a lot of time masking; eventually feeling like the fake selves you occupy have gobbled up your entire self.

So there you go, this is the last valuable piece of Higurashi visual novel in the Mangagamer chronology: a proper send-off, clearing the flaws in Higurashi's own visage and storytelling methods through ethics of living pro-actively. It made me feel guilty for all the times I've successfully ran away from my own pain by isolating myself, only to feel myself stagnating as a result of that isolation...We gotta live for real, I guess. Thanks, Bernkastel.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Hou

Written in June 2024

hello thank you for reading my higurashi covid19 fanfiction ^w^ please like and subscribe
This one's kinda interesting? Initially written as a bonus short story premise in which Takano fantasizes about a world after everyone accepts her scrapbooks as fact, which is fine & silly & all. Then, adapted as a serious spooky action thriller thingie by DEEN without the Takano stuff, which is also fine I guess; set up to make a cute little near-anniversary anime OVA where Keiichi and Rena badass-beat up hinamizawa syndrome zombies is chill, even if not what I'd want from the series. Then this is like..a visual novel adaptation of the OVA adaptation? This is when it becomes a little bit of a bad idea lol. The first half has a lot of decent Ryukishi monologue-isms, and is going for a generally well-written quarantined atmosphere. Considering this was written 6 years before literally everyone knew all of this, there's some well-lived stuff about adult irrationality in the face of an endemic, mis-info and how lack of communication methods makes everything even worse during these times, and hysterical radicalization. It's absolutely tolerable, maybe even decent, for the first half. Then it descends into a completely toothless and meaningless "Rena kills people for fun" action story that...doesn't even write its climax, but rather does a 2 minute long sprite slideshow. Why ? ? Ryukishi could at least write something intense or scary here but chose for something arbitrarily created to fill in anyone who hasn't seen the DEEN OVA...not abysmal dogshit but pretty useless.

Kamikashihashi
Abysmal dogshit. Every character is at their most flanderized and OVAcore, stale bread action. New characters are fine, but the lore is kinda just unnecessary and not emotionally, thematically, or intelligently cohesive at all. Not fun to read, stale bread plot twists, ends with an excuse to be hentai. I can't find for certain if these two are by Ryukishi or not - there's like no sources anywhere about it - but it feels completely phoned in, even in little ways. I kept noticing how rather than having each screen of text be a lil vignette with characters placed with thought on the screen, all the dialogue in this has characters overlap and replace each other constantly - it feels like either some random console port staff made it, or Ryukishi forgot how to make Higurashi. Doesn't even have any long rants about Touhou or Mahjong in it! Die!

Hinamizawa Bus Stop
This has some stuff going on! Ryukishi was already decent at character writing, because the dynamics between proto-Rika and Mion are really enjoyable to read. The evolution from initial fears and anxiety about the dam conflict, to some weird psycho-religious stuff is super natural - just as it is in the original series - while the jump to the hinamizawa syndrome stuff is awkward as shit. I kinda feel that this falls apart in the last act, unfortunately; it just doesn't wring all its plot into something that says anything about any of it.. In retrospect, it's impressive that Higurashi expanded its ideas in such meaningful ways! Cuz there's absolutely nothing thoughtful about hinamizawa syndrome's relationship with the brain, mental illness in general, it doesn't even get to dwell on the government's actions for long.. I endorse the shitman subplot BTW i thought it was awesome don't listen to shitman haters

Mehagashi
he wrote the onikakushi keiichi punishment scene for the third time. die!!!!!!!