This review contains spoilers
Right after the chilling conclusion of Onikakushi - a visual novel which I loved going through - the complete reset of Watanagashi was utterly jarring. Resetting the time back to Keiichi's first forays into Hinamizawa completely baffled me at first. I started going through the more slice-of-life sections - club activities, walks home with Rena, the works. Everything seemed just as it was, until the introduction of the mysterious twin sister, Shion Sonozaki.
I love the way Shion is played for the first few chapters after her introduction. Both Keiichi and the player take her as some scheme made up by Mion to express herself as a woman to a greater extent. This is supplemented by past interactions with both Rena and Mion; even referring to herself as "[this] old man" on various occasions. Her femininity seems caged up if existent at all and even when Shion is revealed to be a seperate person from Mion later on, the seed of Mion's crisis have already been planted in your head and are not easily torn out for the remainder of the game.
This is perhaps the first thing that jumps out at me about Watanagashi, the cause-and-effect of the plot is felt far more strongly here than Onikakushi. Both are high-quality, slow-burning horror experiences that slowly inundate you in their world, but Watanagashi feels less like a sequence of events than the climax of hundreds of years of slowly boiling societal conflict, all concentrated onto the shoulders of one school-age girl. Even the most despicable villains in the game manage to make you feel for them - though Oyashiro's curse is definitely a plausible explanation which manages to fill in some narrative gaps, much more emphasis is placed in the scarier sections on how characters interact and intersect, whereas this was more largely relegated to the slice-of-life segments in Onikakushi. I like how the lines are drawn differently as well; in Onikakushi it's Keiichi against the world for the most part - as everyone who can leave him does until he is forced to act drastically as he is backed into a corner. Mion is the victim of this coalescing tragedy in Watanagashi - and as such Keiichi ends up with a lot more allies; this both results in the game not repeating ideas that Onikakushi expresses and results in the moments of character interaction feeling like more emotionally resonant interactions that contrast with the horror segments rather than another medium to express Keiichi's psychological breakdown.
On a wider thematic level, Watanagashi builds on Onikakushi excellently as well. The overarching plot theme; the mystery of whether Oyashiro's curse is a result of the supernatural or the man-made is explored deeper here to great effect. In the supernatural department, the mythology of Hinamizawa, its people, customs and families are built upon excellently and explain the town's relationship with its mythos excellently. And if you lean towards the man-made theory - believing the curse to merely be a symbol of familial/societal traumas as they build through generations - the same history gives you glimpses of the spite Hinamizawa's citizens have had to deal with; the way the prominent members of the community clawed their way to the top and how desperate its figureheads are to avoid the social image of the savage and sub-human Hinamizawa citizen of old.
In short, Onikakushi is an amazing horror visual novel - if it weren't, I wouldn't play the second part - but Watanagashi manages to keep the snowballing horror while introducing a depth of character the first game laid the foundation for but didn't quite deliver upon.
I love the way Shion is played for the first few chapters after her introduction. Both Keiichi and the player take her as some scheme made up by Mion to express herself as a woman to a greater extent. This is supplemented by past interactions with both Rena and Mion; even referring to herself as "[this] old man" on various occasions. Her femininity seems caged up if existent at all and even when Shion is revealed to be a seperate person from Mion later on, the seed of Mion's crisis have already been planted in your head and are not easily torn out for the remainder of the game.
This is perhaps the first thing that jumps out at me about Watanagashi, the cause-and-effect of the plot is felt far more strongly here than Onikakushi. Both are high-quality, slow-burning horror experiences that slowly inundate you in their world, but Watanagashi feels less like a sequence of events than the climax of hundreds of years of slowly boiling societal conflict, all concentrated onto the shoulders of one school-age girl. Even the most despicable villains in the game manage to make you feel for them - though Oyashiro's curse is definitely a plausible explanation which manages to fill in some narrative gaps, much more emphasis is placed in the scarier sections on how characters interact and intersect, whereas this was more largely relegated to the slice-of-life segments in Onikakushi. I like how the lines are drawn differently as well; in Onikakushi it's Keiichi against the world for the most part - as everyone who can leave him does until he is forced to act drastically as he is backed into a corner. Mion is the victim of this coalescing tragedy in Watanagashi - and as such Keiichi ends up with a lot more allies; this both results in the game not repeating ideas that Onikakushi expresses and results in the moments of character interaction feeling like more emotionally resonant interactions that contrast with the horror segments rather than another medium to express Keiichi's psychological breakdown.
On a wider thematic level, Watanagashi builds on Onikakushi excellently as well. The overarching plot theme; the mystery of whether Oyashiro's curse is a result of the supernatural or the man-made is explored deeper here to great effect. In the supernatural department, the mythology of Hinamizawa, its people, customs and families are built upon excellently and explain the town's relationship with its mythos excellently. And if you lean towards the man-made theory - believing the curse to merely be a symbol of familial/societal traumas as they build through generations - the same history gives you glimpses of the spite Hinamizawa's citizens have had to deal with; the way the prominent members of the community clawed their way to the top and how desperate its figureheads are to avoid the social image of the savage and sub-human Hinamizawa citizen of old.
In short, Onikakushi is an amazing horror visual novel - if it weren't, I wouldn't play the second part - but Watanagashi manages to keep the snowballing horror while introducing a depth of character the first game laid the foundation for but didn't quite deliver upon.