#I think I mentioned the witch tradition by implication in a couple posts but it hasn't come up directly

[serpentface]

A witch of the Naig-Troibadnnas (Yellowtail river valley) people, resting and enjoying a smoke of the mild stimulant brolge leaf on a hot summer day.

Witches are a small part of the everyday cultural framework among the Hill Tribes. They are individuals considered born possessed by a virgranul, a type of disembodied wild spirit that seeks to inhabit human flesh, either entering the body at the moment of conception, or entering the body at the moment of death. The latter is a dire circumstance that requires significant intercession to fix (the dead body may wander off without rites, leaving the person's soul trapped and liable to warp into the dangerous fuldaigh spirit), while the former circumstance is what causes a person to be born a witch.

In the case of those afflicted in the womb, possession by virgranul is lifelong, and is both a curse and blessing- it divides and isolates them from the human world and causes other wild spirits (both benevolent and malicious) to be perpetually drawn to them, but also allows for them to be attuned to the subtleties of spirits, and able to work magic and divination that the everyday person is incapable of.

Witches are usually recognized from a young age due to marked behavioral differences or atypical development, though are sometimes simply identified as such without obvious behavioral indications, by other witches having read signs of their coming. Their occurrence is not frequent, usually once in a generation for any given tribe. An identified witch child will be taken from their family (the timing varies by tradition, though is usually upon puberty) and into mentorship by an established witch, who will impart their accumulated knowledge and skill and teach the child how to best harness their condition.

One can be a witch regardless of their gender, with the only commonality being that they must remain unmarried, and are expected to never have children (deemed too dangerous, unavoidably placing a child in the path of potentially harmful wild spirits). With no spouses or children to support them in holding a household and herds, witches are instead supported by their communities as means of payment for their services. They typically live in semi-isolation in the boundaries between the village and wilderness (a reflection of their own division between the world of people and of wild spirits, and a protective measure for their communities), and will periodically be brought needed supplies. They do not commonly enter villages unless summoned, or for the sake of certain holidays and festivals, and live most of their lives in seclusion aside from any given mentee (who will in turn care for their mentor in old age).

The societal function of witches is as intermediaries between people and their ancestors, people and wild spirits, and as especially skilled performers of practical magic (most commonly weaving protective spells into worn items, such as clothing or the nose rings of cattle). Forms of practical magic and intercession with ancestors and spirits are performed by all members of society, but a witch has intimate, detailed knowledge of such things and tremendous natural skill that makes them an invaluable asset.

Witches personally discern the identities of the spirits living in any given area and will attempt to familiarize themselves with them, learning in depth about their ways, giving warnings of where the particularly dangerous (or mischievous) ones are, and giving recommendations on which will be receptive to offerings in return for boons. When a village needs to commune with a particularly powerful or dangerous spirit (such as a wildfolk witch), they will commonly send their own witch as an intermediary.

They are ascribed have the ability to directly summon ancestors (who otherwise come and go of their own volition, and rarely ever deign to come at the call of one who is not their descendant). This is of great use when a person finds themselves punished by their ancestors with no certainty as to why, or cases where an orphaned child's ancestry must be identified to gain them proper spiritual support.

They are also regarded as having innate qualities of divination, particularly in reading birdsign (itself generally acknowledged as communication from ancestors, and occasionally gods). The average person has basic knowledge in reading omens of birds and a learned repertoire of key signs, but a witch can divine the messages of birdsign in immense and specific detail, through a vast knowledge system of the meanings of the species, sex, flight direction, gaze, prey, number, and songs of birds. It is common for people to approach a witch for a reading of the skies before undertaking a significant venture or life change, in order to receive detailed and specific advice.

Witches are always literate (and will be taught to read and write by their mentor if they cannot already) and will record their repositories of knowledge in tomes. These are items of absolute secrecy and taboo for a non-witch to touch (the consequences can be severe, you really don't want a witch ancestor-spirit upset with you). Witches can often become competitive about the knowledge stored in these tomes and are known to organize heists amongst themselves in order to gain access to each other's secrets. Most people avoid getting themselves entangled into the complicated rivalries of witches, as these competitions can get ugly and result in many a petty curse if one gains a witch's ire.

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The only visual cue distinguishing this man as a witch is the tattoos on his forearms, otherwise usually regarded as inappropriate to mark in the contemporary Hill Tribes cultural sphere (the face, upper arms, and sternum is reserved for important clan/tribe/ancestry identification, hands and forearms are reserved for witches, and the rest of the body is appropriate for decoration). These unique forearm tattoos indicate his ancestral connection with a lineage of witches, not blood ancestry but rather the generations of mentors that have produced him. The lines extending down to his fingers are the newest, indicating that he has fully mentored another witch and gained a place in this ancestral line.

The rest of the tattoos here are tribe and blood ancestry identifiers (on the face and upper arms respectively, worn by all members of society), and purely decorative imagery (visible here is a deer, horse, eagle, and a dragon). He also has a snake on his forearm, applied decades ago in an act of youthful rebellion, which has since gotten in the way of critical open skin space.

His clothing is otherwise typical wear for warm seasonal conditions- a man's wool shawl and woven belt, short trousers, decorative deer hide (distinct to the Naig-Troibadnnas), and sandals (these are imported Wardi style sandals, which have been modified with preferred elevated heels). The horn shaped torc on his forearm identifies him as an esteemed elder.

[tarhalindur]

Higurashi Gou final thoughts pt. 1

(Spoilers go under a cut:)

Taking this by arc:

Onidamashi-hen: The best executed first cour arc by a significant margin.  Probably not coincidentally, it stays the closest to the structure of the OG arc and thus keeps more of OG’s tension ratchet than the other Gou arcs.  I have two main issues, and I’m pretty sure both of them can be firmly pinned on the anime staff rather than Ryukishi07 himself.  First, it pulls its punch on the stealth sequel aspect.  I’m not entirely sure that going for a stealth sequel was the correct decision (it’s a cost/benefit tradeoff), but if you do you’re going for the wham of the sequel reveal, and the anime undercut this by putting the Rika/Hanyuu scene at the start of episode 2 rather than the end of the arc.  Second, it overdoes the final Rena fight, making it so over-the-top that it’s difficult to take seriously.  Neither of these issues exist in the manga (which has a believable amount of stabbing and has the Hanyuu scene at the end of the arc where it should be), and in the former case we also have a Ryukishi07 interview indicating that this was a change requested by the anime staff, so this goes on them.  (Interestingly, by way of contrast I think this approach might actually work well for the Mieruko-chan adaptation that Passione has coming out later this year.)

Watadamashi-hen: The core issue here (above and beyond fridge logic after Satokowaski-hen) is the finale, which landed like a wet fart.  It both escalates from zero to 100 *way* too fast and has the worst case of “tell don’t show” in the neo-question arcs - we learn about every single dead body in the arc from Ooishi’s end-of-arc narration.  That’s relatively defensible for three of those bodies, which we only learn about secondhand even in OG Watanagashi-hen (though IIRC in OG two of those bodies have foreshadowing from rumors earlier in the arc, and unless I’m forgetting something that’s absent here), but all five?  Yes, keeping Keiichi locked away from the final showdown removes fridge logic issues, but you have prominent security cameras - you can at least have him see the aftermath of the showdown on the screens (and freak out because of it).  Adding insult to injury, the Keiichi vs. door scenes are also so over-the-top as to damage willing suspension of disbelief.  The 0-to-100 issue is harder to fix, because the one thing Watadamashi did right was put the Rika-loses-it scene as an end-of-episode cliffhanger, and “Keiichi et. al. are about to enter the Saiguden” probably wanted an end-of-episode cliffhanger as well for discussion purposes (it might have been able to get away with using the commercial break).  The simplest fix is the same one @tsuisou-no-despair​ floated: cannibalize an episode off of another first cour arc.

Tataridamashi-hen: Amusingly, I think Gou has retained OG’s tradition of having the Tatari- question arc being the weakest question arc.  As I see it there are two interlocking core issues here which boil down to the same issue.  Tataridamashi-hen goes for a very unconventional method of building tension: it doesn’t, instead relying on the viewer’s realization that something bad has to be coming to do so for it (the old “that can’t be right, we’ve still got twenty minutes left in the episode” reaction I more commonly associate with things like police procedurals).  The problem is that this runs into the Endless Eight lesson: even flawless metatext should not be used at the expense of enjoyability of the actual text.  And while the arc got some leverage out of “when exactly is this going to diverge?”, there’s a point much like Endless Eight itself when you realize where it’s going to diverge (i.e, not until the end) and that until then you’re sitting through the same events you remember from OG.  It works about as well as it did for Haruhi.  (Unless you’re a new viewer, but in that case staying too close to Minagoroshi-hen has other issues.)  Worse, unlike Minagoroshi-hen itself (which did something similar to build tension but a) non-source readers hadn’t seen it before so it wasn’t foregone the same way and b) you had several more episodes after the subarc for the main event) the arc ends almost immediately after this.  (The simplest fix here might have been cutting down on the arc time by speedrunning Minagoroshi events, reducing the amount of time you’d have to wait.  You could even have a couple of obstacles collapse faster than expected; this late in the first cour it would serve as foreshadowing for Satokowashi-hen, and would also deal with unfortunate implications concerning the village’s prejudice considering that the staff knew Satoko was going to be the culprit.  Trimming an episode would also neatly solve the issue of where to get an additional episode for Watadamashi-hen from!)  The good news is that the final confrontation is the best of the first cour arcs (it’s somewhat more realistic than the other two, actually not that far behind some of the more memetastic OG moments except for Teppei’s eyes, and not showing Ooishi’s rampage is forgivable given that they knew they would be actually showing it in Nekodamashi-hen), but that’s damning with faint praise.

Nekodamashi-hen: The best Gou arc.  The episode 15 jump cut is the stuff of legends and the best scene in the show by a sizable margin (the one thing the director does well is black humor, it seems), while the rest of the arc isn’t as good, it’s far shorter on demerits than the rest of the show.  The one really, really obvious demerit is that they really didn’t need to spend half an episode on the intestines-ripping scene (if Ryukishi07′s comments are to be believed, once again we’re pinning this on Passione), but effects on my stomach aside there are worse issues to have.

Satokowashi-hen: And here we have the other side of the coin; this is the worst Gou arc, and it’s the one spot where I’m pretty sure Ryukishi07 himself gets some of the blame.  There’s a few issues here.  First, the single most obvious dangling plot thread from Matsuribayashi-hen (Satoshi’s fate) is effectively dropped despite being directly relevant to the other dangling thread that was picked up (how Rika treats Satoko and vice versa); this includes missing an opportunity to show Satoko’s character arc through different responses to learning about Satoshi’s condition.  Secondly and compounding, Shion is also dropped along with the Satoshi thread; AIUI this is kind of understandable given final Satoko/Shion interaction in the Matsuribayashi-hen VN (which IIRC never made it into the anime), but dropping her without explanation still leaves something that looks awfully like a plot hole since a single conversation with Shion is potentially enough to stop the events of this arc from ever happening.  (”Character X had information that would have stopped the tragedy but never had an opportunity to tell anyone” is a classic tragedy trope, but you should really have a *reason* for that character never having the opportunity as opposed to just having them vanish without explanation.)  Finally, there’s just the general issue that while the ending points for both Rika and Satoko are reasonable the path they take to get there just doesn’t quite add up.  I can kind of get there via a combination of “blame the director” (the loops montage could and should have easily shown Satoko’s deteriorating mental condition as she watched - using interlaced cuts to her face with changes in facial expression is a classic method) and mind caulk (Rika was exaggerating for effect when she described her desire to go to St. Lucia’s as a long-time thing and it only really kicked in after Matsuribayashi-hen, Satoko originally only planned to suicide in Matsuribayashi-2 and only took Rika out with her as a crime of passion after feeling betrayed, hence the next few loops lacking her murdering Rika) but being mind-caulkable is not the same as actual good execution.

I mean, I’ve banged on this drum before, but... the basic concept works.  Really well.  Satoko’s abandonment issues and Rika’s treatment of Satoko are two of the major dangling plot threads from OG Higurashi (*eyes both Minagoroshi-hen and anime-only Yakusamashi-hen*).  It makes perfectly good sense that the latter comes back to bite Rika, especially in a sequel literally titled “karma”.  I already suspected Satoko was on the autism spectrum based on OG, her being ADHD in addition to or instead of that makes perfectly good sense given those conditions often overlap.  Rika’s desire to escape the well morphing into a desire to escape Hinamizawa entirely?  Sure, just present it as that.  Satoko steadily losing her support network as her friends are torn away from her by changing life circumstances, then going to a boarding school that she hates, that strips the rest of her support structure for her and starts to take even her one remaining friend (her childhood friend, no less - and one that Satoko is at this point attracted to romantically in true osananajimi fashion) away from her, and then starting to snap with some prodding from a certain witch?  That’s a compelling story idea!  But as present it just doesn’t quite work, and that’s on the execution.

(Side note: I wonder if some of what went wrong with Gou was just the kind of production issues endemic to modern anime, amplified by the pandemic.  I remember at least one comment/blog post somewhere in the wake of WEP’s issues noting some of the effects that production issues can have on an anime, and one of the things they noted was excessive slavishness to the source material as a time-saving measure; that sounds awfully similar to some of Ryukishi07′s comments about how he didn’t expect Passione to take his script quite so literally, and to my admittedly untrained eye it sure looked like there were a bunch more other animation studios than usual mentioned in Gou’s credits...)

Final score: depends on your exact rating system, but given the range I’m looking at I can’t see how I can give it any score other than 3.4/5 for obvious reasons.  (Pending Sotsu, anyways.  It’s possible that Sotsu will resolve some of these issues - in particular, Ryukishi07 always has struck me as the kind of author who would get a kick into baiting us into falling for the same twist twice; it’s not impossible that the apparent lack of unreliable narrators so far is a double bluff, and that could affect the “question arc” scores in particular.  More on this in a forthcoming solution space post.)