As with Minagoroshi, I find Matsuribayashi to be a mixed bag, though a mixed bag by Higurashi's standards is still very good. These last two chapters are parrt of what prevent Higurashi from being a masterpiece for me, but ultimately I still love Higurashi just as much as I would if it were a masterpiece. I doubt even the most ardent of Ryukishi's fans would consider his writing perfect, and enjoying his work requires some acceptance of his imperfections. There are few writers who craft their works with this much love for their characters and this much thought in portraying the messiness of human experience, but there is a lot to accept in order to get to the highpoints. Some things will frustrate you, some things might come off unintentionally goofy, sometimes he overexplains and you want him to just move on already, sometimes he kinda cheats the rules of the mystery genre, etc. But while there are some things that genuinely frustrate me, I kinda love all the weird goofy stuff, all the parts where you feel he might not have been completely sure of what he was doing. The epic final chapter of Matsuribayashi is a point where the flaws and qualities have this weird kind of co-existence. On one hand, we could look at Higurashi's climax as a fantasy, a childish solution to a story that can often feel all too real. This is something Ryukishi concedes to in the Staff Room after the chapter:
"In other words, can you see that in the worlds of Higurashi, anything can be overcome when people talk to each other and help one another? Unfortunately that doesn't happen in reality. Helping each other creates friction, and often times, working alone is a lot simpler. However, we always hope that we can connect with other people and understand each other, so that we can face any difficulty. In that sense, this world is a fantasy."
He goes on to talk about his choice to make Takano the 'enemy' of this chapter, and how it suggests that he failed this worldview. He asks "What kind of ending would be the best outcome following the worldview of Higurashi? Perhaps it's something better than the Matsuribayashi chapter...."

From this perspective, the final chapter of Matsuribayashi is a failure because it fails to resolve the incredibly complex character and thematic conflicts in a believable way. It creates a fantasy of friendship and working together as a kind of spiritual power, a literal rule of the universe. It overcomes the highest of stakes and a vicious enemy. These kids are able to defeat a massive government conspiracy through tricks and traps. It feels much closer to reading a Shonen series than anything else up to this point. As Ryukishi himself admits, it partially comes from him not quite knowing how to resolve the story in a way that truly gives justice to its worldview. I think the other flaw here is residue from Chapter 7, which is that Higurashi just gets a lot BIGGER than it needs to be. Again, the draw of the series is really the character writing, and the conflicts are a lot stronger when they're contained between the characters. Tsumihoroboshi's climax is far fetched as well, but it's EMOTIONALLY believable because the conflict between Keiichi and Rena has been developed so perfectly. The whole chapter feels very true to the actual experience of trying to help a friend that's spiralling. The scenario is undoubtably a little silly, but the feelings are real. That feeling isn't really present here, and that's because the stakes of the conflict have sprawled into this massive conspiracy that exists way beyond the characters.

The other issue is Takano as a villain. This is also an issue in Minagoroshi but it's one which is more relevant here. I think Ryukishi writes himself into a corner with Takano's cartoonish levels of evil. The problem is that he ends Minagoroshi on a scene where Takano massacres an entire village while laughing maniacally, and then spends the opening hours of Matsuribayashi begging for our sympathy. My flaw is not with Ryukishi's worldview that even people who appear 'evil' become that way through trauma, and that there is always a possibility for redemption. The problem is that he writes a villain who is not a bad person in a realistic way. She is a bad person on an epic scale. It would be less of an issue if the final scene of Minagoroshi was cut down, or perhaps not even there at all. The opening hours of Masturibayashi overcompensate by aggressively piling on the tragedy. Unfortunately, it feels nowhere near as earned as the tragedy in previous chapters, and part of that is how it feels like Ryukishi is trying to MAKE us sympathise with her. Obviously all stories utilise some kind of emotional manipulation, but it's very different here to how Shion is written in Meakashi. At the end of that chapter, Ryukishi clearly wants us to cry for Shion. He's obviously directing us to feel that sympathy. For some people it didn't work, and Ryukishi acknowledges in the staff room that some readers won't accept it. For me it worked because we spend that entire chapter locked in Shion's head. It's not just that terrible things happened to her, but that those events took an incredible toll on her mindset and mental health, and that toll is really what we see in that chapter. And even though she suffers plenty in Meakashi, we still see what her day to day life is like - it isn't just an endless parade of suffering. Before asking us to cry for her, Ryukishi carefully builds up that mindset and that experience of overwhelming emotional pain. While Takano is given a psychological motive, the opening hours are more about the exposition - we get an explanation of how Takano became Like This, rather than actually feeling what it would be like to be Takano. It definitely feels a lot more forced in that regard, and it's where I find Ryukishi's portrayal of suffering to be overly indulgent (though I've heard the manga is much worse with this). A lot of these issues wouldn't be as bad if the story just had a smaller scale - if Takano were the culprit, but not someone in charge of a conspiracy to massacre an entire village, if her backstory was given more space to breathe instead of being a series of traumatic bullet points.

So with these issues outlined, we could describe Matsuribayashi as something of a failure. It doesn't quite give justice to the worldview and the emotional struggle that we saw in previous chapters. But if Matsuribayashi is a failure, it is a very enjoyable one. Perhaps a high stakes and action packed climax wasn't the right way to end Higurashi, but for what it is I think Ryukishi does it very well. He manages to keep an impressive balancing act of maintaining nonstop tension for around 5 hours, and while the climax is arguably bloated I found it never got tiring to read. And while there is a kind of childishness in its execution, there's also kind of a delight in the silliness of it all. Part of the point of Higurashi is that these are characters who have had their childhoods robbed from them, and the club games are a form of reclaiming that childhood. As I wrote in my Tsumihoroboshi review, this idea is best executed in the climax of that chapter. Matsuribayashi takes things even further, where the club game techniques are part of why these kids manage to win. It's like the story itself becomes akin to a child's imagination. The characters are often having so much fun that it sometimes feels like the stakes aren't even there, that the win is already sealed. At times, it makes the fight feel less like a fight and more like a victory lap. This is arguably worthy of criticism but I do find it really fun, and it adds to the borderline utopian vision of friendship that Ryukishi presents in this chapter. I can't believe entirely in what he presents here, and part of that is that I don't think he does either, but I still like the fantasy.

Much of what Higurashi's fans value about the series is this feeling that it breaks through being a story and becomes way too fucking real. It's not necessarily that the plotline itself is realistic, but that there are moments where Ryukishi captures something that feels so true to traumatic experience that it becomes overwhelming to read. Matsuribayashi has none of that 'realness'. It's pure story, pure fantasy. But what Ryukishi does maintain is a love for the characters, and a joy in just seeing them interact, to find beauty in the silly things that supposedly 'don't matter'. And so even though Ryukishi ultimately failed in some ways, I don't mind. He maintained his love, and I maintained mine.

Unfortunately, Higurashi's final chapters are frustrating ones. When comparing Umineko and Higurashi, I think Higurashi has the higher highs. Chapters 3 and 6 are stronger than any individual chapter of Umineko, and while Umineko is certainly no slouch in terms of the emotional moments I think Higurashi's emotional highs do hit harder. However, as a complete work I think Umineko is the stronger one. This is partly because of their structure. While there is an ongoing plot progression in Higurashi, each episode is primarily focused on the story contained to the episode itself, with the progression of the overall story taking a backseat. This gives the last two episodes the burden of bringing everything together and ensuring that Higurashi becomes one story as opposed to a series of stories. Umineko's ongoing throughline gives its final episodes more of an advantage in this regard. The other problem is that Higurashi is an absolute masterpiece in terms of its character writing and thematics, but flawed at best as a mystery story. Ryukishi's writing is more about the emotional meaning than the logical meaning, and while he can integrate this well into his mystery writing, it sometimes leaves him at odds with his chosen genre. Meakashi and Tsumihoroboshi are pretty disappointing when taken just as 'answers', but they manage to justify those answers within the context of what they're doing dramatically. The problem is that Tsumihoroboshi already brings everything together perfectly in terms of Higurashi's thematics and emotional throughline, and I would even argue if the rest of the story were modified to be smaller in scale it could have been a perfect ending. This leaves Minagoroshi as a chapter which has to focus more on bringing everything together plot-wise, and it often struggles in this regard. However, a weaker Higurashi entry is still Higurashi, and despite this entry's many flaws there's a lot to appreciate here.

While Tsumihoroboshi wraps up the character arcs of Rena and Keiichi (leading to them taking more of a backseat in these final chapters), Rika is still a character that we've been distanced from up until this point, being more of a mystery even in her arc Himatsubushi. Ryukishi makes a good decision to resolve the mysteries about her upfront in this chapter, leaving time for a greater examination of her resolve to end the loops and her weariness from her constant failure. Hanyuu is also an interesting addition to the cast. I'll admit I find some of her cutesiness and tics to be quite irritating, but her character has more complexities than on the surface. We often associate defeatism with struggle, but I think the point of Hanyuu's characterisation is that defeatism is far more comfortable than hope. It invites complacency - it's easier to not take action in the belief that there is no point than to take the risk of an action that could be rendered meaningless. While her character definitely doesn't have the depth of others in the series (particularly because Ryukishi chose not to include aspects of her character that could have rendered her more troubling), I think this comfort in defeatism is a well done character flaw.

The second and longest portion of Minagoroshi is the attempt to save Satoko, which is at once the most frustrating and most well realised aspect of the chapter as an 'answer arc'. There's a pretty big structural issue here in that the first few hours and last few hours move along very quickly and focus on major reveals. The middle portion isn't ENTIRELY disconnected - the chapter as a whole is about the conflict between hope and defeatism, and so having Rika and the gang overcome the 'worst case scenario' is a meaningful addition to this theme. But it does feel quite removed from the rest of the arc's resolutions, and the deliberate repetition and frustration of this portion doesn't help. However, a better way of looking at it is that this portion is a thematic kind of 'answer arc' for Chapter 3. Chapter 3 has plenty of mysteries in its final hours, but the driving question of that arc is "What am I supposed to do in a situation which appears hopeless?" The characters are put in a situation which nobody should ever HAVE to be in, and Keiichi's choice only leads to things becoming much worse. However, inaction is also clearly the wrong choice. Much like in Tsumihoroboshi, we see in the answer arcs that the outcome wasn't inevitable, that there was always another way. Everyone was just too lost in themselves and disconnected from each other to see it. This portion of the story is incredibly repetitive because that is the way of dealing with a dysfunctional bureaucracy. You can be cynical about the answer here given how much advantage the characters have (especially with the Sonozaki family's involvement), but the portrayal of the power of community is really quite moving, and you can tell it's something Ryukishi really believes in.

Another note on this portion: I really love the scene where Ooishi shows up at the protest. Keiichi believes Ooishi is showing up as an ally when it turns out that he's there to call it off. While I'm not going to claim Higurashi has particularly radical politics in terms of its portrayal of the police, this moment goes a lot further than most stories would. At this point Ooishi is no longer a suspect for the murders, and he does gain a more likeable presence. The story gives him something of a 'good cop' role. While this role inherently comes with issues, Ooishi is probably the strongest portrayal of a 'good cop' in fiction. He DOES have good intent, sympathetic motivations, a 'loveable asshole' kind of personality, etc. He's not a villain. BUT he also fucks up constantly, unintentionally escalates situations, makes wrong assumptions, and goes against his own morals because of his obligations as a police officer. He's only ever good when he ISN'T being a cop, as we see with him going against his duties to help the protestors.

On the other hand, a scene that I REALLY do not like is the Angel Mort scene here. While the majority of Angel Mort scenes are all pretty gruelling to get through, the one in here might be the worst scene I've ever seen in a piece of media that I otherwise liked. I think the majority of Higurashi fans can agree that these scenes are the lowpoint, though I think some fans go a bit too hard in trying to justify Ryukishi writing them. It feels as if people think Ryukishi was held at gunpoint by otakus until he wrote these scenes in, as if he had any obligation to include them. And yes, this kind of fanservice was accepted in the visual novels of that era and seen as an essential element of anything you'd release at Comiket, especially when starting out. But I think in overstating Ryukishi's progressiveness people forget that he WAS part of this culture. I'm sure he's different now, and probably regrets writing these scenes. I can't reach into his mind, and maybe he did have real disgust at writing these scenes at the time, but he also did have a choice to not include them. The best case scenario here is that he chose to sell out in order to gain more sales. He fucked up! We don't need to make any excuses for it! Usually the scenes are disconnected enough from the rest of the story that they don't necessarily 'ruin' it, but the one in this chapter is so closely connected to Satoko's abuse that it actually does seriously diminish the integrity of that portrayal. The otaku are portrayed as being sleazy and all, but the light tone of the scene ultimately lands on a tone of them being loveable goofballs. It feels like an affectionate jab from one otaku to another more than any kind of actual critique of fetishising a child abuse victim. At best it's a deeply distasteful and tonally failed comedy scene, and at worst it is complicit and inviting in that fetishisation.

My other bone to pick with this chapter is the Hinamizawa Syndrome reveal, which I think has issues on multiple levels. The most obvious of these is that it is incredibly far fetched as an answer to the mystery. This is actually my lowest concern - the mystery was never the biggest appeal of Higurashi to me, and I don’t necessarily mind that the answer isn’t realistic. The supernatural explanation for the time loops works fine because they explain an element that was ALWAYS supernatural. I think the problem is that Hinamizawa Syndrome is that it uses a ‘scientific’ explanation in such a contrived and specific manner that it feels even sillier than a fully supernatural explanation would be. I don’t have much to add as this is a very common complaint with the resolution to the mystery, and my analysis of Higurashi is more based around the characters/thematics than the mystery. For a review that picks apart Higurashi’s flaws as a mystery, I would recommend reading Jared E. Jellson’s analysis. His review is written with a much stronger knowledge of the mystery genre than mine, and while he is far more critical than I am of the series I find his critiques very sound.

My main issue with Hinamizawa Syndrome is how it functions as a metaphor. Hinamizawa Syndrome’s pseudoscience as an answer can be justified by the suggestion that its primary function in the story is a reflection of how the characters’ actions are the results of the environment that they’re raised in. This emphasises that the characters’ violent actions didn’t just happen for no reason, and that it is not inherent to them. The problem is that this is already in the story - we do not need the metaphor to explain this to us. Metaphor and allegory are often a strong way to render the abstract as something literal, but when we use metaphors for things that already have a literal presence in the story it feels as if we are being treated like children. In this context, metaphor becomes a way for us to more easily swallow the actual meaning. Hinamizawa Syndrome is an explanation for everyone whose thoughts on the characters began and ended with them being “psychos”. It’s a way to bash The Point into the audience’s head. And while a lot of Higurashi fans ARE bad at critically reading the story, I think catering to that kind of fan in the first place was a mistake. Sometimes you just have to accept that some people won't get it. Part of why Umineko is stronger as an overall story is that it has much more trust in its audience in this regard.

I also think Hinamizawa Syndrome is far too broad as a metaphor to really work. Of course all of the characters were influenced by their circumstances and their mental health, but the connections to Hinamizawa are wildly different. For Satoko’s case it makes perfect sense because the toxicity of Hinamiazawa as a social environment is directly connected to her family issues. For Shion, the primary issue is her family life, and the main connection to Hinamizawa is that the family is powerful there (though this would apply much moreso to Shishibone City and Okinomiya). Rena’s baggage with Hinamizawa is that she was separated from it, and this separation connects to her wider family trauma. Keiichi’s problems are from his mistaken belief that Hinamizawa as a whole is out to get him, causing him to lose his trust in his friends. All of these issues are connected to Hinamizawa, but the relationship to it is different in each one, and it can’t really be said that the village itself causes the issue in the latter three cases. This points to a wider issue, which is that the metaphor diminishes the specificity of the characters’ conflicts.

There’s a fine line between viewing mentally ill characters that hurt others as being inherently evil, and removing all possible accountability for their actions altogether. While the Hinamizawa Syndrome explanation implies that it exacerbates already existent problems, it does come a bit too close to the latter in providing a very convenient and direct explanation away for every single amoral action. Again, it’s a thing of making the already-existent meaning of the story easier to swallow. A reader who views Rena as being too ‘evil’ to be forgiven in Chapter 6 can now take solace knowing that it was the syndrome, not her. I personally think that it undermines some of the themes in the series, in particular the idea of accepting the sins of oneself and in others. Take for example the climactic scenes of Watanagashi and Meakashi: When Keiichi believes Mion is torturing him, he responds with a mantra of “You are not Mion!” He loves Mion so much that he cannot accept the idea of Mion the murderer, and instead chooses to believe in the Mion he knew before. In one sense, he is right to do this - it is in fact NOT Mion in front of him (though of course this isn’t what he actually means). But this is actually part of why his compassion fails to reach Shion. From Shion’s perspective, Keiichi’s compassion is moving, but it isn’t directed towards her. Her conflicts in Meakashi come from feeling unloved, and so Keiichi’s attempt at love here only comes across as more hateful. If Keiichi’s position was less “I love you, and therefore this is not you” and more “I still love you, even though you do this” then he might have successfully reached through to Shion. In the climax of Tsumihoroboshi, this is exactly what Keiichi does - he treats Rena not as a monster who has taken over his beloved friend, but instead treats her as still being his friend. I find Hinamizawa Syndrome is a bit too removed from the characters for it to keep this theme as powerful. However, one thing that Hinamizawa Syndrome might be useful for is that it handwaves some of the thornier aspects of how the series portrays mental illness. While Higurashi has a remarkably well done portrayal of trauma, its storyline is one that inherently does associate mental illness with violence, and it’s pretty hard to do that even sympathetically without going into some rough implications. So it probably is more tasteful that the murderous traits of the characters are applied to an entirely fictional syndrome than a real one (such as Rena’s implied schizophrenia).

While my issues with the Angel Mort scene and the Hinamizawa Syndrome reveal are major ones, I don’t want to come off as if I dislike the chapter. It’s just easier to delve into the flaws, since the positives of the chapter are mainly positives that exist across Higurashi as a whole. I don’t have much to say about the climactic scene in terms of analysis, but let it be known that this was yet another Higurashi chapter that had me sobbing by the time the credits rolled. Pretty much everything after the Hinamizawa Syndrome and Takano reveals is incredibly intense and well done (aside from the after credits scene, which runs a little too long and would work better as a tip). There are a few more issues I have with the final two chapters in general, but those ones will be more relevant to my Chapter 8 review.

note: this will be less of a direct review and more of a comparison with the manga adaptation's "confessions of a golden witch" chappters. i want to make this review readable to people who haven't read those chapters but i will warn that they open the catbox and reveal a lot more about sayo's backstory than in the game. imo these chapters shouldn't be treated as the final word on umineko's questions but i thought i'd give the warning to anyone who rly values the ambiguity of this episode.

i found ep 7 of umineko a little frustrating as i read it as i'm sure many people have. i'll admit to being a bit of an impatient reader and just wanting some direct answers. the episode definitely answers a lot but it does so in a way that's vague and complicated - if you've already gotten to the answers as i had it feels a little annoying that they're hidden behind layers of magic, while anyone waiting for the mystery to be solved for them must have had a pretty bad time. i wanted to be emotionally devastated and i think the episode's "magic filter" over the backstory puts you at a bit of a distance from it. once i finished the episode i was able to appreciate its choices a lot more, and i especially respect it after reading "confessions of the golden witch". confessions is a retelling of sayo's backstory without the magic filter. i think david lynch said in an interview that he does have specific meanings in mind for each of his films, but he has no interest in explaining them. i believe ryukishi writes in a similar way and the confessions chapters feel like a direct explanation of what he had in mind. it definitely has value for ppl curious about that, but the "Umineko Episode 7 EXPLAINED!!" video vibe is hard to shake off. reading the chapters gave me even more respect for his decision to explain sayo's backstory in the way that he did.

by the end of higurashi you basically feel like the characters are your own friends, but umineko's characters remain fundamentally unknowable all the way to the end. all that exists of the 18 people on rokkenjima are interpretations of them, and we don't have access to who they truly were. ep 7's presentation remains true to denying the reader the lack of direct access. we can interpret sayo's choice to tell the story in multiple ways - the way i see it is that she hasn't actually processed the events herself yet and is still holding onto false hopes in interpreting things like the scene where kinzo tells her the 'truth' in such an optimistic way. i can see issues with this reading but for me i find something resonates about the portrayal of someone who doesn't completely understand themselves and has not had the time to fully process. the sayo we see in confessions writes about her situation with clarity and self-awareness, which is a necessity for the adaptation's more literal approach, but it loses the power of this perspective.

another thing i struggle with about the "confessions" chapters is that they border on being the kind of misery porn that ryukishi usually avoids. when i use that term im not saying it to criticise stories simply for being miserable - misery is a part of the human experience and some stories are going to need to go into upsetting and ugly territory to capture it. 'misery porn' has less to do with depicting miserable events and more how they're framed. the events are the same in both tellings but confessions really places the suffering upfront and plays it in a very heightened way, emphasising the more shocking aspects of the backstory. in contrast episode 7 is far more tasteful in the way that it conceals information and lets the reader recognise the more extreme aspects on their own. it's told in a way that prioritises sayo's feelings first and foremost, and it's explained later in the episode that keeping the catbox closed is a means of honouring her.

finally, i think episode 7's narrative choices are some of ryukishi's strongest engagement with empathy. i've talked about this a few times in my WTC reviews but i think one of ryukishi's most interesting qualities as a writer is that he engages with empathy in a way that's integrated into his narrative form and which actually pushes the reader. many stories have the takeaway that we should be more kind and empathetic, but few recognise that doing so is often a challenge. part of the reason why "empaths" come off as so silly is that they treat empathy as a magical power that allows you to understand someone perfectly. empathy is not that - it doesn't inherently grant understanding. there'll probably always be aspects of the other person that are inaccessible to you, and i think a truly meaningful engagement with empathy is done with the acceptance that your understanding could be completely wrong. but you still should try and make that attempt at understanding, even if you can't be certain of its truth. ryukishi's denial of access to sayo's backstory is key to this. episode 7 requires the reader to look beyond what they're directly shown and try to understand sayo, and it's written knowing that the reader could finish it with a very confused/shallow takeaway of her motivations. it isn't a satisfying experience if the reader never makes that attempt, and as a result it pushes them to engage with empathy in an active way rather than a passive one. i think confessions exists in part because so many readers struggled with that. on one hand i kind of understand the motivation behind that, but on another i find ryukishi has the issue of feeling a need to appeal to parts of his readerbase that he doesn't need to. im glad that issue didn't appear for the VN itself, and that ryukishi had enough confidence to take the risks that he did. it's one of the most rewarding WTC chapters as a result.

i unfortunately lack the motivation to write a coherently structured review of this one given the amount of Thoughts i have, so instead im going to present this as a series of notes:

- the quickest summary of my fata thoughts is that i really don't like the first 3 doors and like all of the doors after, but the lows of doors 4-8 are REALLY rough. i like the core of fata morgana a lot and at its best it rly does nail the intensely romantic and sublime affect it's going for. i don't love all of the banter between michel and giselle but their romance overall is pretty moving, and the VN is rly great at turning it into spectacle while maintaining its emotional meaning. it's easy to see why it's emotionally resonated with so many. but unfortunately when it comes to the specifics i find fata fumbles on so many things. it frustrated me more than nearly any piece of fiction in a while, but i'll admit it also kept my interest because of that. it stayed on my mind as i was reading and i rly liked discussing it with ppl (both fans and haters). everyone knows what's great about this VN - the romance, the music, the emotional ambition, etc. and because of that it's a bit easier to complain than to sing the same praises that everyone else has. so while the tone of the review overall is negative i do wanna stress i liked a lot of fata and def don't regret reading it. whether i'd recommend it is another matter. if you're invested in VNs and have a lot of free time as i do then i think it's worthwhile, but if you don't have either of these things i don't know if it's worth the time investment.

- i think an issue throughout all of fata is that it feels far too emotionally externalised. fata is 100% a melodrama and on one hand emotional externalisation is what melodrama's all about - it's about letting go of realistic presentation and human behaviour to bring as much emotion out as possible. i love a lot of melodramatic works but in fata i think this externalisation becomes an issue because it makes everything so clear cut to the point that the emotions can feel simplistic and overly laid out. a lot of melodrama also externalises through form and the best examples of this can get away with emotionally simplistic writing. on this level fata is kind of a mixed bag - the soundtrack is obviously the highlight and carries a lot of sequences to be far more emotionally meaningful than they'd be on the page. fata's strongest sequence ("reclaim yourself") also uses formal elements specific to visual novels for excellent dramatic effect. but the prose itself doesn't feel like anything more than a middling imitation of the gothic novels it's clearly inspired by. the translation also has the awkward mix of period-accurate terms and modern colloquial speech. i dont mind the latter at all in period fiction but it feels so awkwardly employed here.

- in particular i think the portrayal of suffering and tragedy in the VN often places too much emphasis on what is happening rather than the characters' response to it. tragedy as a literary genre is a rly tricky line to ride because it builds a kind of entertainment out of suffering - not necessarily entertainment in the sense of being fun, but in the sense of an intense emotional engagement that leads to a cathartic release. i love tragic fiction but it's not hard to argue that the genre is inherently distasteful for these reasons. i think this is why the tragedies that interest me most are ones which are more invested in the circumstances that create suffering + how the characters react to their/other people's suffering than the actual event of suffering. i think when you take these into account you're closer to being able to examine suffering as an actual human experience and not an awful thing in the abstract. which isnt to say that direct depictions of suffering can't be shown at all, but that i rarely see that much value in depiction alone. i want the sense that the author isn't just using suffering for shock value and that they have a sincere investment in that human experience. there are times where i feel fata rly does want to give justice to its subjects and others where it feels half-hearted. so much of the story is just kinda there to set things in place, and when tragedy is brought into that uninterested setup the results rly fall apart. this is most evident in the sequence with the villagers in door 5. i just cant rly see this sequence as anything more than a way to get giselle and michel to reunite. it speeds through giselle's relationship between the villagers and their relationship with her but indulges in her torture, with little point other than "wow people sure are cruel!" and yet once giselle and michel reunite the resulting scene is a rly strong one that sensitively portrays giselle's experience as a SA victim. in that scene there's a sense of true emotional investment on the author's part and an astute idea of what shouldn't be shown. these elements just arent there in the previous torture scene. these contrasts are what make fata such a frustrating work for me, and i wish it could have reached its highs without twisting itself in contrivances and indulgent suffering to get there.

-while im still on the topic of door 5 - one of the strongest chapters in the game and prob the most crucial one since the rest is extremely dependent on you believing that the michel and giselle romance is deeply powerful. their initial dynamic is pretty standard but effectively endearing, and once it gets into the territory of a bond from shared trauma it becomes pretty powerful. i'm not made of stone! but there's one scene which annoys me so much because it's actually written excellently, but the choice of CG kind of ruins the whole thing. this is a scene late into the door where giselle shows her scars to michel, wanting both to display what michel's father did to her, but also to see if michel can still desire her. one of the door's most interesting threads is how giselle still maintains erotic desires while knowing that she still hasn't recovered enough to be able to consummate them - this tension also existing within michel. the scene shows that giselle still hasn't resolved this tension, but she can reject the idea of her body as undesireable and trust michel enough to let herself be desired again. the scene as it's written works because the eroticism is not for the reader - it's explicitly between the characters. however, the CG's depiction of giselle's body prominently displays her breasts, and shows nothing of her scars. by including a CG at all the body is being displayed to the third party of the reader, which already diminishes the power of the scene. but its framing makes it even worse by explicitly objectifying giselle and making it appear that the depiction of her body is for an imagined reader to gaze at.

- another part of fata which im conflicted on is door 7. on one hand i commend the developers for writing a story about a transmasc/intersex character in 2012 with sincere investment in depicting the experience of dysphoria, writing him as a morally complex character and leaving absolutely no doubt that he should be seen as a man. i'm not qualified to say how accurately it portrays both of those experiences, and i'd be happy to read any critique of the portrayal from transmasc and intersex individuals. but i feel at the very least that novectacle cared about the portrayal. that being said there's one sequence in this chapter which gets far too indulgent in the suffering, even for fata's standards. obviously it's acceptable for a trans story to get depressing - the portrayals of outing and rejection from family/love interests are pretty rough but reasonable to show especially for the time period. but i don't think there's really any justification for the extended sequence of aimee physically, psychologically and sexually torturing michel while he's kept imprisoned. in this case it's less that it's careless as a result of the story needing to rush itself, and more that you could just remove it from the story without making a difference. michel's trauma with aimee is already perfectly justified by her forced outing and cruel rejection of him. i don't find it believable that she basically becomes john jigsaw. the sequence would be more justified if michel's sexual abuse was referred to back in door 5 - given that door's portrayal of a bond emerging out of shared trauma, you would think michel being sexually abused would have had some impact on that chapter. but i think even if it were more prominent to the overall story, there isn't any need to depict it in such strong detail. higurashi didn't have any sequences explicitly showing satoko's abuse in detail because it wouldn't actually add anything that we don't already understand through the depiction of the after-effects. fata really could have used a similar sense of restraint if this element was going to be included at all.

- another issue fata has is its obsession with reveals/twists to the point that it unnecessarily withholds information or kinda cheats the reader in its presentation. michel being trans is something that i dont think rly needed to be a twist, and door 5 would have honestly been even stronger if we were able to engage in his perspective more. i think the reveal is relatively tasteful because it's explicitly from his perspective, and the horror of the reveal is in the horror of being outed rather than the horror of his body (as most trans reveals tend to be played, unfortunately). a case that i find more frustrating is in door 3, which i think would have been much more engaging if it were told from maria's perspective rather than revealing her as a villain halfway through and then keeping her motivations vague until the end. idk if it'd fix that door's main problem which is that the level of cruelty she inflicts upon the white haired girl just doesnt rly align with the rest of her motivations, but it'd make the chapter much less frustrating than having a reveal which is obvious yet poorly justified in the text itself.

- jacopo is just a disastrously written character. the attempts to make him sympathetic are so misguided. i love when characters who are awful people are humanised, but i think to humanise someone doesn't necessarily mean that it should justify their actions. in both door 3 and door 8 fata doesn't quite absolve jacopo's actions but it gets very flimsy in trying to justify them. with door 3 he basically does a 180 as soon as the reveal with maria happens. the problem is that he starts off as a fucking cartoon villain and there just isnt any development to him gaining any kind of conscience. door 8 is even worse in that his actions are so monstrous that the game rly has to go hard in figuring out any kind of sympathetic motivation and the one that it comes up with is "okay so what if he was a pedophile". and even if we just ignore that it's still like bro locked up a girl in a tower and had the blood drained from her to be sold to a whole town as a fake miracle cure and it was all because he was just too anxious to communicate properly. i just find it frustrating how the story treats his and mell's actions as equivalent when mell was literally threatened with death if he didnt partake in the whole thing. it wouldn't be as big of a problem if the level of his actions was scaled down before his sympathetic turn.

- the way the first three doors are tied into the story as a whole feels kinda disappointing, both on the basic narrative level and the metafictional level. part of my dislike for the first three doors is the sense that they're just setup and there isn't rly that much investment in these characters beyond their ability to suffer. in the metafictional context you could justify this by saying that there's an intentional contrast between giselle telling the stories and michel experiencing them with a detached spectatorship, and that part of the point is that we can more easily detach from suffering that isn't our own. fata implies this direction but doesnt rly commit to it, and its metafictional position in the end becomes very different. in door 8 michel is able to understand everybody because of his spectatorship, to the point that he understands them better than the characters themselves do. it doesn't rly have much of a sense that some things can only be understood through experience, rather than simply witnessing. ryukishi07's works have similarly empathetic conclusions, but i find his portrayal of empathy more interesting because it acknowledges that empathy's fundamental limitations. there's a sense that we can't have a complete access or understanding - empathy brings us closer to it, but to empathise takes work and a recognition that you can still completely misunderstand the other. fata's portrayal of empathy feels a lot simpler because it feels the need to explain everything and not leave enough about the characters inaccessible to michel and the reader.

potentially more notes to come later, though im fairly satisfied with what i've written for now!

Tsumihoroboshi is Ryukishi’s masterpiece. This chapter is not only my favourite of Higurashi, but one of my favourite pieces of fiction in general. It continues Meakashi’s theme of showing tragedy as avoidable, but while Meakashi is one of Higurashi’s most tragic chapters, Tsumihoroboshi is a brilliant work of anti-tragedy. This chapter reveals just how important the slice of life scenes are to Higurashi as a whole. The common perception of Higurashi is that it uses the facade of a cutesy story about friendship to reveal a gory psychological horror story. Tsumihoroboshi reveals Higurashi as something very different. It’s a story about being able to confront all of the horrors of the world, all of your sins, all of the evils you’re capable of committing, and still being able to come out of it believing in love. I find Ryukishi’s optimism is believable because of how painfully aware he is of human failings and the world’s failings in general, but it’s also clear that he has faith that we are not condemned to those failings.

On the narrative level, Tsumihoroboshi is perfect as an “answer arc”. Rather than retelling Onikakushi from a different perspective, Ryukishi answers it through telling a new story. The adoption of shifting perspectives is one of his strongest choices here because it allows the reader to reach the answers implicitly. Rena’s perspective is a standard Higurashi storyline at this point, and the desire to find the answers to the mystery makes it easy to buy into what we see until we return to Keiichi’s perspective and realise that Rena is tragically mistaken. Because of the similarity between Rena’s storyline and Onikakushi there’s already an implicit confirmation that Keiichi really was just paranoid. The direct confirmation is saved for a point where it serves an emotional purpose rather than the simple answer. The shifting perspectives also serve a thematic purpose for a theme that is evident in Ryukishi’s work as a whole - emphasising just how easy it is to get lost in your own perspective and fail to take the challenge of understanding the other. It’s interesting how solving Onikakushi’s mystery requires looking beyond the perspective you’re given and trying to understand what you’re not given access to. I think it’s fair to argue that Ryukishi isn’t the strongest mystery writer, but one thing he is great at is utilising the audience participation of a mystery and weaving it into his empathetic storytelling. His work does not just inform us of empathy’s power, but challenges us to actually engage in it meaningfully by looking beyond the information and perspectives we’re given. Much like Meakashi, Tsumihoroboshi’s answer could sound unsatisfying on paper, but Ryukishi’s weaving of it into the drama is so brilliantly done that it works excellently.

Tsumihoroboshi is also one of the strongest chapters in terms of presenting religious themes in a secular context. This chapter still emphasises faith and miracles, but its primary theme is sin and atonement. It confronts each character with their own sins and failures. The junkyard scene is a dialectic between Rena and Keiichi’s worldviews regarding friendship and trust. Rena challenges Keiichi’s worldview of friendship and loyalty by detailing the club’s collective sin of inaction during the time where Satoshi and Satoko were being abused. This sin does not make any of the club members horrible or evil people, but it reveals to Rena the inadequacy of friendship - we enjoy other people’s company, but when we can’t help them in times of need how much does that friendship really mean? Rena values friendship for giving her moments of happiness, but it is not something that she has faith in like Keiichi does. I find this scene resonates so much with me because of my own personal flaws of cowardice. While Rena’s argument is the one refuted by the narrative, it’s something that holds a lot of weight. Fortunately for the narrative, Keiichi’s refutation is even stronger, especially when he points out that Rena’s cynicism is ultimately a coping mechanism so she can accept her action of murder as the only possible outcome to her situation. Meakashi sets up this arc’s theme perfectly by emphasising how pointless and avoidable the tragedy was, resisting the initial fatalism of the question arcs. Tsumihoroboshi builds on it with an explicitly anti-fatalist worldview - if we accept sin as an inevitability, then we will continue dwelling in it. Keiichi argues that we should accept our sins as a part of our selves, but we should not accept them as inevitable, and that we can always become better people in the future despite our sins. These worldviews are nothing new, but the scene makes the dialectic truly resonate because it feels as if the series up to this point has been building up to it - we have witnessed the darkest depths that these characters are capable of, but we also know that their love is true.

Another key scene in this chapter is Keiichi remembering the events of Onikakushi. I love how this is delivered after we’ve come to the ‘answer’ of Onikakushi ourselves, and so the direct confirmation is more about the emotional context than any expositional purpose. This is a scene where Keiichi’s worldview is put into practice by having him confront a greater sin than the collective one of the club members. Here, he confronts that whatever state he was in that led him to shooting children with a BB gun was one that consumed him in another world. The scene is so heartbreaking because Keiichi remembers with such affective intensity that it’s as if he really did just kill Rena and Mion - rather than separating this sin as something that another version of him did, he takes it on and acknowledges that he is capable of evil. Acknowledging that you are capable of evil and actually being evil isn’t the same thing, of course, and Keiichi embraces that he can still choose to be good. Much like Watanagashi, he chooses friendship as a faith in the face of evil. While this faith may have been naive in that chapter, here it’s a perfect defense mechanism from falling back into evil. His monologue about how he’ll continue to love Rena as she kills him just as she did when he killed her is just as perfect a representation of love as martyrdom as the climax of Watanagashi. I really love how the religious subtext of Higurashi is brought out in these scenes to give the sense of an epic sweep to this intimate tale of friendship. Representations of love as a spiritual power are usually reserved for romance rather than platonic love. That doesn’t mean it’s absent in media (‘the power of friendship’ is a common trope, after all) but Tsumihoroboshi really makes it mean something by rooting this power in the specifics of the actual character interactions/dynamics.

Finally, the chapter’s climax is the point where Higurashi reaches its synthesis - it’s the scene that all of Higurashi was building up to. This is a story about children who have their childhoods robbed of them. By this chapter, we understand that this happened long before the story of Higurashi began. Everyone has had to confront something that they shouldn’t have at their age, and while this obviously extends more to Satoko and Rika than anyone else, nobody is truly innocent. This is why the club games matter - they’re a space where they get to reclaim this innocence and childishness rather than lose it entirely. This is made explicit when Mion mentions that the club was formed to give Satoko and Satoshi a place to find comfort in while they were being abused at home. They’re not a facade and they never have been, both in-universe and in the story as a whole. The goofiness we see at the beginning of each chapter are just as core to the characters as their traumas are - in the club games we see that their trauma does not define them. This reclamation was possible after the tragedies of 1982, but this is the first time where it’s become possible in 1983. While Higurashi has returned to the purity of friendship in its suspenseful moments before, Tsumihoroboshi is the first time that the childishness of the club games has returned in a serious context. They’ve been kept separate for so long that the development is truly unexpected - it initially feels like a breach, as if the story’s rule of keeping the silly and the serious firmly divided has been broken. It also breaks the rule of having every chapter end in tragedy, and it’s this breaking of the story’s ‘rules’ that help to make this scene’s anti-fatalism so powerful. Once we get over the rupture, it becomes clear that this scene was truly earned and that these ‘rules’ were always set up to be broken. This is where Higurashi was always heading, and it’s something truly beautiful.

It didn’t have to be this way.

One of my favourite types of tragedy in fiction is the kind where it’s all so avoidable and pointless, yet nobody realises it until it’s far too late. This kind of tragedy is intentionally frustrating, but when done well it’s absolutely devastating. There’s a wide variety of tragic fiction but for simplicity’s sake I’ll mark a distinction between fatalistic tragedy and character-driven tragedy. The kind I’m talking about is often character-driven, and I find there’s often something more human in a pointless tragedy created by character flaws and misunderstandings. Higurashi’s question arcs feel intensely fatalistic with the recurring events in every chapter, the scene with Rika predicting her future and each arc ending in some kind of tragedy within Hinamizawa no matter how different the specifics are. This is not to say that character-driven tragedy is non-existent in these arcs, but that it is easy to come to the conclusion that the tragedies of these arcs were bound to happen. Meakashi is the first arc where the opposite is completely evident. So much of Meakashi could have been avoided - the arc’s final hours go out of their way to make Shion’s revenge as pointless as it possibly could have been. The move away from fatalistic tragedy is one of the core elements of the answer arcs, and this chapter does excellent work in setting it up.

One of the most impressive things about the chapter is the use of Shion’s narration. Ryukishi very effectively locks you into her head and writes a convincing internal voice, which saves the chapter from some of its more contrived plotting. I find the chapter is the one where it feels most evident that the answer to Watanagashi’s mystery was written first and Ryukishi had to work his way backwards to narratively justify it. As an answer, I don’t find it the most satisfying for multiple reasons - one of which is that there’s something a bit overdone about the twin setup, and the other is that it negates Mion’s development in Watanagashi. Once I figured out where the chapter was going I was really anxious about it, but fortunately, Shion’s PoV is written well enough to make her descent into madness convincing. I really loved the experience of the chapter’s first few hours where her selfishness and cruelty slowly emerge. Her connection to Satoshi initially comes off as a weak plot thread until you realise the romance is meant to be intensely one-sided. Shion latches onto Satoshi because of his outsider status, but she does not make any attempt to truly understand him, which is most evident in her treatment of Satoko.

As I mentioned earlier Shion being the culprit does negate some of Mion’s characterisation in Chapter 2, and my main anxiety about the chapter as I read it would be if it would detract from what I found most powerful about Watanagashi. The core of Watanagashi’s power is Keiichi maintaining his innocent faith in friendship in the face of evil, and Meakashi maintains this core. Shion performs Mion as a comically evil character, and I love seeing how she reacts to Keiichi’s innocence from her perspective - how she gets shocked at how he can still love Mion even if she were this absurdly evil person. This allows her real feelings to emerge from her performance, but unfortunately she never truly lets go of the performance either. It’s another tragedy in the chapter that she never lets things get to the point where Keiichi’s love is directed to her rather than Mion. Shion receives love but is too consumed by hatred to give it to others and most of all to herself - the final scenes are so hard hitting because Shion only realises this once it’s far too late to do either. You get the sense that so much of her behaviour comes from her just giving up on herself, and in the final scenes I cried for her despite her previous actions appearing unforgivable. When she's talking about how she wishes she had never been born and thanking everyone for loving her even though she was "like this" it gets me wishing that everything could have been turned back and that she could have found some peace. And then just as I was thinking that, the vision of her acting as a loving older sister to Satoko appeared as another punch to the gut. I understand why this ending might not land because of how cruel Shion is throughout the rest of the chapter, but it's one of Higurashi's most emotionally impactful scenes to me because of how much it nails the pain of knowing how different things could have been.

Tatarigoroshi is the bleakest Higurashi chapter and its most effective tragedy. It’s driven by intense anger at institutional failures and the resulting inability to solve problems that nobody should have to take care of on their own. It’s driven by the fear that there is nothing you can do to resolve someone’s suffering. The argument between Keiichi, Mion and Rena in the classroom is surely one of Higurashi’s most painful scenes because it shows the breakdown of friendship in terms that are all too real. This scene is especially awful because none of the characters are outright wrong. Mion and Rena are right to argue that this isn’t a burden that should be placed on the responsibility of some teenagers, but Keiichi is also right to resist the idea that the only option is to wait and hope things should get better. The characters hurt each other, not over murderous plots or potential demonic possessions, but because they are in a situation that none of them can emotionally handle. Satoko’s characterisation is excellently written as well - while this is a story written from an outsider’s perspective of abuse, it’s one where the victim is written with an extensive amount of interiority, helped by her being a character who we already know. Ryukishi writes in a difficult zone where Satoko is an ‘imperfect’ victim who makes major mistakes without falling into the trap of victim blaming - instead he shows that victims’ relationship to their abusers is motivated by a lot of complex psychological factors which cannot be quickly resolved. Once again he allows you to understand why characters make the decisions they do, even if they’re the ‘wrong’ ones.

The most interesting characterisation in the chapter is of Keiichi, who becomes a more interesting protagonist with each arc. We have another synthesis of the loving Keiichi with the paranoid, murderous Keiichi. I think this episode is one of the most interesting to look at how love in Higurashi is portrayed. Keiichi’s tragedy in this episode is that he is driven by love for Satoko but he fails to actually understand her. Part of his motive for murdering Teppei is that he believes things can immediately go back to the way they were. This is a case where his innocence fails him - he has very little idea about the reality of trauma and PTSD and how Satoko is not going to instantly revert back to how she was before Teppei returned. Again, this is another case in Higurashi of the ‘wrong’ thoughts and decisions being understandable ones in the context of Keiichi being a dumb kid. He is generally very misguided and never really takes into account what Satoko is actually feeling. So when I say Keiichi fails to empathise with the other characters in this episode it’s not about him being malicious or without love, but more that he is limited by his own point of view. I think the turmoil of experiencing love without a true understanding of the other is one of the strongest themes across Ryukishi’s entire work (particularly Umineko) and this chapter is where it’s most apparent in Higurashi.

One of my favourite parts of the chapter is the murder scene, and I want to take note of how this part in particular is given a strong advantage by being in a visual novel. It’s undeniable that Ryukishi stretches things out - the average scenes in Higurashi and Umineko tend to be at least 10 minutes long and often even longer (especially depending on your reading speed). Bad news when you’re reading an Angel Mort scene or when the narration repeats things that have already been explained, but some of the best scenes in his work benefit from the stretching of time. The murder scene is perhaps the one that benefits most from this. Its effectiveness is lost in the anime and manga adaptations where the scene goes by pretty quickly. Not much actually happens in the scene, and these adaptations convey all the essential information, but the more important thing is how slow and stretched out the murder is - the feeling that you’re actually in there with Keiichi. The extended process of waiting out for Teppei, actually committing the murder and trying desperately to bury the body is all written with painful detail, and the scene’s length feels as if it corresponds to how long this process actually takes. The scene after with Keiichi encountering Takano is even better, and probably my pick for the single most tense scene in Higurashi. It nails the feeling of accidentally stumbling on something you really shouldn’t have, and its circumstances being seemingly disconnected from the rest of the chapter make it feel even more unsettling.

The rest of the chapter is more divisive and for fair reason. Tatarigoroshi starts off as the most grounded and least mystery-driven chapter, then it suddenly pivots into being the most bizarre and unexplainable one. I think it works because it maintains the emotional core of the chapter, which is the feeling of absolute helplessness. Here, it seems as if the world itself has completely turned on Keiichi, denying him any agency or for his previous actions to genuinely stick. This section in particular makes me excited for Ryukishi’s work on Silent Hill, as I think this sense of one’s internal fears being externalised through an intensely hostile environment is absolutely nailed here. I enjoyed theorising for this chapter the most because it’s the one with the most room for supernatural explanations. The first two chapters have the issue that the supernatural explanations make everything too clear for it to be an actual mystery, so the question of whether things are supernatural or real is an unbalanced one. There are a few elements of the chapter that I don’t like as much are the introduction of Irie, who has the unfortunate case of being a character who COULD have been great if Ryukishi didn’t feel the need to bring in his perverted comedy. Unfortunately nearly every chapter of Higurashi has at least one scene which is actually painful to get through. The other part I’m not too keen on is the Great Hinamizawa Disaster, which is another swerve that suffers a bit from its lack of connection to the chapter’s thematic core. The finale is undeniably exciting and has a lot of “what the fuck is happening NOW?” value but this chapter would have ended on a much more poignant note if it finished with Satoko running away from Keiichi on the bridge. I don’t mind some contrivances but Keiichi’s survival is also a bit much even by the series’ standards. I will note that there is a reason why this event has to happen in this chapter, so I understand its presence in the context of the story as a whole. I still take issue with the event in general, but that’s to be elaborated upon later.

The final hours of Watanagashi are my favourite part of the question arcs. Keiichi’s character in this episode is like a foil to himself in Onikakushi. In that chapter he is consistently paranoid and mistrusting of his friends, while Watanagashi shows a Keiichi who is intensely trusting and loving. Throughout the chapter he prioritizes the other over the self, experiencing intense guilt over what is essentially a silly action. It’s easy to look at Keiichi’s decisions in this chapter and make fun of his stupidity as many have, but I think this is missing the climax’s point. Keiichi’s decisions are questionable when looked at with reason, but Keiichi is operating on the principle of faith. One of the themes in Higurashi is applying this religious faith in the secular worlds of love and friendship, and from my memory this finale is the first time where it becomes especially evident. Keiichi’s journey with Mion into the basement of the Sonozaki house is a leap of faith, and Keiichi maintains this faith even when he is confronted with what appears to be pure evil. Even when he is told that he is being deceived he continues to have faith in his friend, outright denying the murderer in front of him as Mion. The whole climax is basically Keiichi being tested to maintain his love. Higurashi creates a really interesting mix of childish innocence and total bleakness. They’re often viewed as separate, but the series’ best moments are when these two modes synthesise into one.

While the climax is the standout, the rest of the chapter is also great. I don’t think it’s quite as gripping as Onikakushi’s second half is, which comes down to Keiichi having a much-needed ally in Rena this time around. That doesn’t mean it’s worse though - this chapter is where I really began to love Rena as a character. Here she continues to get more complex than her cutesy “hauuuu!” persona without ever betraying Keiichi like in Onikakushi. She’s also really fun in the detective mode, especially when she basically pulls a Columbo bit on Mion near the end. One thing I love about Higurashi’s time loop setup is how we learn more about the characters in their different variations, and how these variations suggest that the characters’ actions are driven by circumstance rather than anything innate to them. The paranoid Keiichi of Onikakushi and the trusting Keiichi of Watanagashi are not two different people, despite the apparent contradiction. For a first time reader I think the most key thing to pay attention to is the differences in characterisation between chapters. I think the most important thing to ask is what circumstances could resolve these contradictions.

In a medium known for slow starts, Higurashi’s is one of the most infamous. Onikakushi has 12 chapters, and the mystery only gets going about halfway through Chapter 6. The prior chapters are devoted to slice of life hijinks which took me about 3 hours to get through (and would probably take longer for a slower reader). The extended slice of life opening is very contentious. By anyone’s standards it’s a long time for a story to “get going”, but if you’re expecting lots of murder based on the promotional material or the faster-paced 2006 anime it might become tedious. I don’t blame readers who get annoyed by this opening, but I think many might have the wrong mindset for it. If we view the slice of life scenes as a facade then they’re obviously gratiutous. I think this is the expectation many have for Higurashi - that the slice of life scenes only exist to be subverted. It’s become a pretty common gimmick in anime, especially ones labelled with the term “deconstruction”. But if Higurashi were aiming for a facade, why would it open by telling us where things are going? I think whether or not you enjoy the slow start, it’s worth engaging with it as a deliberate choice. What I noticed pretty quickly is that this isn’t written by someone who thinks of this as an easy way to build up a sense of normality that can be quickly subverted. There’s clearly a sense of admiration for the slice of life genre, and this is the main reason why it is longer than it “needs” to be. My personal defense for this opening is that it has a sense of sincerity to its character interactions and goofy humour that makes it a lot more enjoyable than a facade ever could be. The indulgence in the scenes of these friends just hanging out and playing games builds a sense of genuine comfort and routine. Ryukishi encourages an active engagement in these scenes - the feeling is as if you’re being welcomed into this friend group as Keiichi is. I think the best way to read Onikakushi and subsequent Higurashi chapters is to try and approach the slice of life sections on their own terms, rather than just waiting on the main plot to start. Having finished the entire series, I’d also argue that the slice of life sections are much more important than they initially appear. While there is some narrative foreshadowing, I’m mainly suggesting this from a thematic and dramatic perspective.

The second half of Onikakushi is where the series kicks off the psychological horror that it’s known for. In continued defense of Higurashi’s slice of life I find that the psychological horror plotting is pretty standard, and that it’s the horror’s synthesis with the opening section that makes it special. Onikakushi is one of those “is the main character under threat or are they just crazy?” storylines. The best of these will make either outcome equally horrifying, and this is what Onikakushi excels at. Ryukishi is excellent at tragedy, and it’s the slow destruction of the comfort and routine experienced in the first half that makes this chapter genuinely upsetting to read. The scene where Rena suddenly confronts Keiichi captures this fear I have of my friends suddenly turning on me. It also goes the other way - I’m afraid of no longer being able to trust my friends for whatever reason. The two key scenes for me are when Rena repeatedly says “I’m sorry” outside of Keiichi’s house and when Keiichi directly confronts Mion. In these scenes we’re painfully reminded of the bonds being broken here. Are Rena and Mion using their bond with Keiichi to emotionally manipulate him, or is Keiichi destroying these bonds out of his own paranoia and causing emotional distress for his friends? The personal investment in the characters and their friendship makes these questions a lot more painful to ask than they would otherwise. While the chapter is filled with really tense moments, I find it more depressing than it is scary. The chapter makes it really apparent that the synthesis of slice of life and horror is tragedy.

the main thing this episode reminded me of is the mountain goats song "love love love" and specifically this quote from john darnielle on its meaning:
"The point of the song is, you know, that we are fairly well damaged by the legacy of the Romantic poets–that we think of love as this, you know, thing that is accompanied by strings and it’s a force for good, and if something bad happens then that’s not love. And the therapeutic tradition that I come from–I used to work in therapy–you know, also says that it’s not love if it feels bad. I don’t know so much about that. I don’t know that the Greeks weren’t right. I think they were–that love can eat a path through everything–that it will destroy a lot of things on the way to its own objective, which is just its expression of itself, you know. I mean, my stepfather loved his family, right? Now he mistreated us terribly quite often, but he loved us. And, you know, well, that to me is something worth commenting on in the hopes of undoing a lot of what I perceive as terrible damage in the way people talk about this–love is this benign, comfortable force. It’s not that. It’s wild, you know?"

having finished umineko it'd obviously be a stretch to say that ryukishi is this cynical. even within this episode the character who says a similar sentiment is the hateable erika. but i think this episode (and ryukishi's work as a whole) shows that love is not INHERENTLY good, or at the very least that an individualistic love isn't. the primary failure of the characters in umineko and higurashi is their inability to understand the other, and it's only through understanding and connection that they can save themselves from tragedy. i think this episode follows on from higurashi chapter 3 in suggesting the consequences of love when it comes from someone who does not understand the other. umineko's large cast is used to great effect to show different varieties of these consequences. battler's neglectful response to the chick beatrice emerges out of his love for the past beatrice - a love that consumes him so much that he fails to recognise and respect the chick beatrice as an other. when george kills the eva piece it's out of a belief that his love matters more than anything. kyrie's monologue sees rudolf as someone to be claimed rather than someone human, and it seems that rudolf treats women in the same way. this possessiveness turns love into a self-imposed prison. rosa is trying to reunite maria with her father, but as we saw in episode 4 she also neglected her while trying to do that. i like this moment because it's not used as a handwave to justify rosa's abuse, it's just another moment of someone doing something out of love, or at least what rosa thinks is love. but when your act of love leads to you neglecting your daughter does it mean anything? and finally the love trial as a whole is driven by the lovers' failure to understand sayo and sayo's inability to understand herself. neither george nor jessica can see sayo as a whole, no matter how much they love the part they see. and for sayo the fear of not being loved as a whole is too much. the love trial is so cruel because there's no real winning result. can you truly be loved when you have to kill a part of yourself to feel accepted? can you truly love when you don't understand who you love?