#but tbf with only one ep left to fix all these issues…it was ill-fated from the start

[hanyuusfurude]

this was abt ep 14 and now after ep 15…what I said still stands 💀

honestly this climax felt very cheap to me lol. like the dialogue essentially reduced the last 30-something episodes to satoko’s frustration over studying, and while i understand irl academia is often inaccessible and ableist, this writing isn’t exactly helping me as a viewer sympathize with satoko, considering the lengths she went to, allegedly “bc of studying”

some ppl have said well that’s just what they’re saying so it’s obviously not what they mean! subtext!!

then ok why did not only this ep, but this entire SERIES (gou/sotsu), waste the times they could’ve had Legitimate Conflict between satoko and rika bc of even the stuff that happened BEFORE st. lucia? like satoko knows everything abt rika looping thru june 1983 for 100 years now - if she had expressed resentment toward rika bc of rika never telling her abt the looping, hiding the truth abt hinamizawa syndrome from her for so many worlds, never telling her abt where satoshi has been all along, etc., then this would have been a LOT more believable (and INTERESTING??). but no, we’re still just talking abt st. lucia and studying

and same w rika, like why wasn’t she more like “hey why are you murdering our friends over and over with no remorse for them lol” when they were fighting

also if the fight was gonna be this interpersonal and emotional, then what was the point of showing the original satoko “die” and be replaced by witchoko? bc that setup allows the audience to feel no sympathy or remorse for witchoko when finally confronted with the consequences of her actions and permadeath. like what exactly in the canon rn should be giving me, the viewer, pause when rika is on the brink of permakilling satoko… nothing, bc of the split with witchoko lol. but it also would’ve been impossible to Not split satoko and witchoko bc satoko would be irredeemable if she was truly the one killing everyone with no external influence. so if we’re just killing her evil counterpart (assuming the implication is the original satoko is already gone forever, which is what the writing suggests to the audience) then???? who cares?????? this is just a huge disservice to satoko’s character and story :/

like i just feel like this writing has rly undermined the tragedy of gou and sotsu (and frankly the original), and tragedy is one of the most central themes to higurashi. and before anyone comes here to be like “but in umineko—” or “but in ciconia—” let me stop you right there, bc higurashi was higurashi first before either of those, and clearly to make higurashi fit into those properties we’ve essentially had to break the rules of the world of higurashi and that’s just Bad Writing and a huge disservice to the original series