#it took me a bit to find a pattern that was similar to rika's but yeah this was the closest i got....

[caramelmochacrow]

"Objection!"

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep1-6

It took me way longer than I expected to get around to writing this, and now we’re like one day away from ep7 coming out so that’s a bit awkward, but better late than never, lol.

Anyway I’ve slipped back into full-on When They Cry brainworms mode because of this new series, and I have a whole lot to say about it. 

One thing I wanna say before I put the rest of this post under a cut, though, is that I think Gou should be approached as a remake/retelling first, and a sequel second. That might change later on, but I think Ryukishi and the director really meant it when they said that they wanted this to be accessible to new fans.

Since we’ve already gone through one and a half full arcs, I guess I’ll just start off with my overall thoughts on the series, and how I think it’ll go in the long run, before I get into the specifics of what’s happened thus far.

Like I said above, I really do think that this was written from the ground up as a remake or retelling first and foremost, with the sequel aspects being more like background fanservice to give old fans something to chew on. In spite of the various changes and cuts they’ve made to the story thus far, they’ve been very faithful about replicating the overall experience and vibe of the VN in a way that works well in an anime format.

For one thing, I think this is basically the reason why Rika seems to be weirdly hands-off about everything in this series, instead of actively interfering with everything going on and telling everyone about what’s going on. I get why it frustrates people, but I think it really just boils down to how Gou is specifically trying not to spoil new fans on the story in advance, so they’re keeping Rika pretty much entirely as a background figure who doesn’t actually do much. I think it’s a good set-up, though, since instead of having Rika dominate the narrative in the same way as in Minagoroshi and Matsuribayashi, Keiichi is still the ‘primary’ protagonist of Gou, who’s perspective aligns more with that of new fans, while Rika is a secondary protagonist of sorts, who old fans can see things from the perspective of because of what we all know about the story.

Which I think is actually pretty similar to the VN, since if you go back and reread it, you end up seeing things more from Rika’s point of view, even though she’s more of a background figure for most of the story.

I know there’s the whole scene from the start of ep2 where she’s talking to Hanyuu in the fragment world, but now that we’re further into this new series, I think that scene didn’t actually change a whole lot compared to the VN. It’s mostly just there to spell out that supernatural elements and time loops exist right from the start, instead of only revealing it later on. But in the long run it’s not really that important, so I can see why they decided to just get it out the way immediately. And they still intentionally side-stepped having Rika actually say anything explicit about who the mastermind is, or what the rules of Hinamizawa are, so new fans are still mostly in the dark about what’s actually going on.

Anyway, I’ve been kinda surprised by the sort of pacing and structure Gou’s had thus far, especially since it’s ended up feeling more like a full on remake with mostly superficial differences from the source material. I was worried about how it might go when it became obvious that it’d probably only be 24 episodes, but at this point I think they know what they’re doing with this. And even though it seems to still be trying to cover the same plot beats as the VN, I honestly think that they can pull it off in just 24 episodes. As long as they’re willing to make some ambitious and controversial edits, at least.

I suppose it’s still possible we might get a second season later, and that it’ll end up playing out more like the pacing of the 2006 anime, but I doubt it. The fact that they intentionally combined different elements of Tsumihoroboshi into the Onidamashi arc makes me much more inclined to think that this is going to be a more compact retelling of the VN, with it all being condensed into just 24 episodes.

Going by how many BD/DVDs there are gonna be for Gou, and how they divide up the episodes, I think it’s safe to assume that this will be split into five arcs with 4, 4, 5, 4, and 7 episodes, respectively. Which gives us a better idea of how things will go later on. I think it’s at least safe to assume that they’re splitting up the arcs this way, since that seems like a very strange and lopsided way to split up the discs, and we’ve already seen that Onidamashi was four episodes, and Watadamashi will probably be the same, so it seems to line up thus far.

Basically I think that after this we’ll get a new version of Tatarigoroshi covering five episodes, and then the rest of the series will be made up of two ‘answer arcs’, which will probably be where Gou gets more into original story stuff, and/or more major plot editing. I know the 2006 anime covered the first two answer arcs in season one, and then basically spent the entirety of Kai on the last two answer arcs, but I’m leaning more towards assuming that they’re actually going to cover all the important answers in just these two arcs.

Which seems kinda hard to believe, and I’m still kinda wary about how it might pan out, but there’s a lot they can do to shorten the answer arcs. For one thing, I think everyone’s already guessed that Takano probably won’t be the main villain anymore in Gou, so if that means they can basically skip over all/most of her material from the VN, that’d already let them cut out a lot. 

And for one thing, it seems like Gou’s whole framing device with Rika is kinda already doing the same stuff as Minagoroshi, so I think that basically already makes most of that arc unnecessary for this series.

This is just my speculation at the moment, but I think that Gou’s ‘game board’ might be based on the timeline where Takano’s parents don’t die, and she doesn’t end up involved in the politics surrounding her grandfather’s research, which is I think how they’ll explain her not being the villain anymore. Even though she seems to be the same sort of person thus far in Gou, it’s entirely possible that in this version of events she’s just a regular nurse who has a bit of an obsession with Hinamizawa’s history, but isn’t actually part of any nefarious conspiracies. 

At the very least I think this is the ‘simplest’ theory for where Gou’s heading, since it’s just based on stuff that already happened in the VN.

I also don’t really think that there’s a ‘new villain’, so to say, even if Takano’s more or less out of the picture in this version. I think we’re gonna find out that Featherine and Bernkastel are responsible for throwing Rika back into the loop, but I think that’s a bit different to the idea of there being some entirely new villain or something causing problems.

Anyway, I think it might be a bit more clear if I go into my thoughts on what went down in Onidamashi, lol.

Basically I think that 90% of what happened in Onidamashi was just Rena being infected by the virus like in Tsumihoroboshi. Rika and Satoko’s deaths is a bit of a mystery, but the main thing is that I think Rena killed Tomitake and Takano on the night of the festival. I think it’ll be a bit more clear what’s going on when the next episode comes out and we see what happens to those two again in Watadamashi, but I think it makes sense that Rena killed them in Onidamashi. I think she’d already killed Rina and Teppei before the story even started, and she seemed immediately suspicious of Tomitake when she first saw him and Keiichi joked about how he might be a spy, so I think she ended up killing him and Takano out of fear that they were gonna find out about the murders she did. Also there’s the whole scene where she was ominously watching them on the night of the festival, so there’s that, lol.

And on the note of Rena’s paranoia in that arc, it’s worth noting that the bit where she accuses Keiichi of hiding stuff from her at the dump site is [I think] entirely new, and seems to heavily imply that she was paranoid about the idea that he might have found out about the murders she did. So it makes sense to me that she might have had similar fears about Tomitake. It’s also probably the main reason why she ended up trying to kill Keiichi at the end of the arc, since he’s the other person who she would have been afraid might rat her out to the police.

I think there was also some element of her believing in the idea of Oyashiro-sama’s Curse, and going along with the expected patterns of that, but mostly I think she was concerned about protecting herself and her father.

I’m also assuming that at some point we’ll find out that Keiichi hallucinated the second half of their fight, and that what probably happened was that Rena got knocked unconscious when she hit the table, and Keiichi then went over the edge into full-blown virus paranoia and started attacking her, while hallucinating that she’d woken back up and started stabbing him.

On the other hand, I’m leaning towards assuming that she wasn’t actually involved with Rika and Satoko’s deaths, since there wouldn’t have been any real motive for that. With Keiichi, Tomitake, and by extension Takano, she had clear reasons to be suspicious of them and to want to get rid of them, but there’s no real reason she would have suspected Rika or Satoko. I think they also got killed in their house, so she would have had to really go out of her way to kill them, which seems unlikely. It’s also worth noting that Rika was convinced the whole time that she was back in the Onikakushi route, which is made more explicit in the manga version of Gou where the scene with her and Hanyuu happens after the end of the arc. For one thing she reveals that she was murdered by someone [but she doesn’t remember who], so we can at least rule out the idea that Rika killed Satoko and then herself, but it also indicates that Rika was assuming the whole time that Rena was totally innocent, which is why she told Keiichi to trust her. So I think there’s no real chance that she confronted Rena about her murders and then got killed by her.

So basically I think their deaths are completely unrelated to the other stuff going on in the arc. Which is why I don’t really have any super confident theories about them, lol. My best guess is that, unless there’s some entirely new and unpredictable stuff going on, maybe Shion was off in the background dealing with her own version of the virus. So maybe like how the Tsumihoroboshi scenario seemed to be going on in the background, it’s possible that the Meakashi scenario was happening too. Which would at least be a fairly understandable explanation for why Rika and Satoko would wind up mysteriously dead.

I’ve seen people also raise the theory that maybe Shion also killed Mion, and that it was her disguised as Mion talking to Keiichi at the hospital at the end of the arc, but I’m not entirely sure about that. It’d be a neat twist, though, and in a way it’d help address one issue I’ve always had with the VN, in that Shion seemed to be 100% completely irrelevant to the events of Onikakushi. 

I’m also very curious about the scene where Keiichi goes to the Irie Clinic and finds that it’s being remodeled. Which seems to imply that they were basically packing up shop and abandoning the village. I imagine it’s a response to Tomitake and Takano dying, but it might still be consistent with my theory of Takano not being very important this time around. Even if she’s not involved in all that anymore, it’s possible that just means that Tomitake still is, so maybe it was his death specifically that caused the rest of the team to stop their mission and leave the village.

Either way, I think it goes to show that either Tomitake and Takano both actually died this time around, or they were at least taken out of commission in some way or another. Even when Tomitake dies in each arc, the clinic still continues it’s operations since Takano never actually died.

It makes me wonder if the Great Hinamizawa Disaster would even happen in a version of events where Takano isn’t in charge of things. Unless we’re meant to think that it happened off-screen while Keiichi was in the hospital, it’s odd to think that they’d just pack up and leave before doing it.

Keiichi probably got more or less assassinated by that random nurse at the end of the arc, though, so I think the people from Tokyo in general are still around, and are still at least somewhat aware of the virus. I’m not sure how that might impact things with the GHD, though.

Anyway, I’ve got less thoughts and predictions related to Watadamashi since it’s only halfway done at this point, and is a lot closer to the VN than the last arc was, so I’ll just go over them quickly.

In general I really do think that the arc’s been 1:1 with the Watanagashi arc thus far, aside from Keiichi giving the doll to Mion, which I don’t even think is that important. After ep5 I was wondering if maybe they were going to avoid showing Mion and Shion together until the very end of the arc, but then they immediately went into that in ep6, lol. It looks like they’re trying to make it a bit more obvious what’s going on with the whole Mion and Shion thing in general this time around, though, which I think is a good choice. I think it’s still the same as it was in the VN, but my current understanding of the timeline here is that Mion was pretending to be Shion, and we only first see Shion herself when she invites Keiichi to the cafe in ep6. And I think for the rest of the episode they were just being themselves.

There also seems to be a subtle difference in how Mion and Shion’s eyes are drawn in this version, as a hint to who’s who in each scene, so that’s neat. They’re similar enough that it’s kinda hard to be sure sometimes, but still.

Going by the ep7 preview images, I think the arc will continue following the same path as Watanagashi, with us seeing the group breaking into the Saiguden and talking about Hinamizawa’s history. Though one thing that’s really interesting is that in one of the preview images, Takano seems to be holding a folder of some kind inside the Saiguden, which makes me wonder it’s the same folder of documents she gave to Rena in Tsumihoroboshi, and that she’s gonna talk to Keiichi and Mion about her theory with the virus. That’d at least be one way to bring certain plot points up earlier, and it’d be another way to let them skip Tsumihoroboshi.

Since Watadamashi seems like it should be four episodes, but has also been going notably slower than the 2006 adaptation of Watanagashi, I think it’s safe to assume that like with Onidamashi, it’ll have a more abrupt ending than the VN, and skip over some stuff. There’s already several scenes from the PVs that seem to be from the whole torture basement part of Watanagashi, so what I think will happen is that Rika will just preemptively avoid getting herself and Satoko killed by Shion, and the story will just go more immediately from Shion killing the other family head people to Keiichi and Rena interrogating her. Assuming that the arc as a whole continues going in the same direction as Watanagashi, at least. And I can’t really imagine Rika letting herself and Satoko get killed yet again like this, so it’d make sense to just cut out that part. Also, if I’m right about my guess that Shion killed the two of them in Onidamashi, that’d be another excuse to skip that part in this arc, and that way they’d just be moving it to a different arc instead of outright skipping it.

After how Onidamashi went, it’s hard not to assume that this arc will diverge heavily from Watanagashi at the end, but honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being more or less the same. I think Shion would have basically the same motives for everything even in this version of events where Mion got the doll. And if I’m also right about the idea that Takano might talk to them about the virus theory in the next episode, maybe that’d push Shion over the edge for basically the same reasons as Rena in Tsumihoroboshi. At the very least I’d prefer them to keep Shion as the villain instead of making Mion the villain just for shock value, since it’s an important part of Mion’s character that she doesn’t ever do that.

I think the only way I could see it working is if Mion does the murdering in this arc not because of paranoia or the virus, but just because of her family obligations. Like, maybe she finds out about the Saiguden break-in, and ends up being obligated to kill the four of them as punishment for it. I still think that might be kinda contrived, but it’d be better than making her get the virus for the first time in the whole franchise.

I’m also still really curious to see if they’re going to talk about Satoshi at all in this arc, since they haven’t really talked about him at all thus far in Gou, which has been one of the more notable cuts. They did still show that one shot of him killing his aunt when Oishi was explaining how the past incidents went, so I don’t think he’s been completely written out of the story, but they’re being a lot more evasive about him than in the VN. At the very least, like with how the last arc contained references to Tsumihoroboshi, I wonder if this arc will reference Shion’s whole relationship with Satoshi, or if that’ll only be revealed later.

Also, since Onidamashi’s ending felt pretty similar to Watanagashi’s ending, I think the very end of this arc will go in a different direction to shake things up. I dunno what to expect from that, but maybe it’ll play out more like Tatarigoroshi, and Keiichi will leave the torture basement only to find out that the GHD’s happened.

Anyway, that aside, I wanna go back over why I think that they’re basically cutting Tsumihoroboshi out of the story, and moving different parts of it to other arcs. Like I said, I think the whole scenario with her killing Rina and Teppei was going on in the background in Onidamashi, but there’s also multiple instances of them reusing quotes from Tsumihoroboshi in that arc. The main one is that, when she’s venting out her paranoia to Keiichi, she says part of her monologue about ‘trying really hard’, which in the VN was from when she was explaining her motives for killing Rina and Teppei when she confessed to her friends. I don’t think there’s any major twists or subversion there. I think that was straight up just her alluding to the murders she’d done, even if Keiichi didn’t know what she meant this time around. The manga version of this scene is also a fair bit longer, and contains much more of the Tsumihoroboshi monologue, which makes it even more obvious.

Along the same lines, the manga version of the fight between Keiichi and Rena in this arc also used Keiichi’s internal monologue from the rooftop battle between them in Tsumihoroboshi, so that’s another example of them reusing stuff from that arc in Onidamashi. It’s not quite as obvious in the anime since they don’t really have any internal monologues at all, but the manga makes it very obvious.

And like I said above, it’s possible that the next episode of Watadamashi will also reuse elements of Tsumihoroboshi by having Shion find out about the virus from Takano and get paranoid about it.

Also there’s the whole fact that Keiichi was having flashbacks to Onikakushi throughout the last arc, which is also what basically happened in Tsumihoroboshi.

So basically there’s just a whole list of reasons why I think they’ve decided to skip that arc in Gou and spread out the important bits of it to other arcs, which is a major reason why I think they’re going to try and cover the whole story in just 24 episodes.

If they skip Tsumihoroboshi entirely, and cut out huge portions of Minagoroshi and Matsuribayashi depending on how they handle Takano, then I think it’d actually be pretty easy to just cover the remaining parts of the answer arcs in just two arcs across 11 episodes.

Considering that they haven’t really referenced Meakashi at all thus far, unlike how Onidamashi was blatantly a mash-up of Onikakushi and Tsumihoroboshi from start to finish, I think they’re going to basically have Meakashi just be the fourth arc in Gou, and be kept mostly intact. But going by how it’ll probably be four episodes long, compared to being six episodes long in the 2006 anime, I think it’ll focus mainly on the flashback stuff, and the present-day part of the arc will be changed so it’s shorter and doesn’t feel like a repeat of Watadamashi.

In general I think a lot of the changes and edits they’re making are being done to avoid unnecessary repetition between the different arcs, so yeah, if they do a Meakashi arc, I think they’ll try and make it a bit more unique.

After that, I think the final 7-episode arc will effectively be Gou’s version of Matsuribayashi, but that’s probably be where it gets more into it’s original plot points and stuff.

I get why lots of people would be worried about them condensing the answer arcs that much, but I think it could work just fine, and if anything it might end up just feeling less back-loaded and slow than it was in the VN.

I think the overall structure of the last arc will probably be fairly similar to Matsuribayashi, though, with us probably revisiting the earlier fragments and seeing what was going on in the background. Which would probably be where we’d get reveals for stuff like what happened to Rika and Satoko in Onidamashi, and whether or not Keiichi hallucinated any of his fight with Rena.

Also, I agree with basically everyone who thinks that Featherine is gonna end up being part of Gou’s story [since she literally shows up in the OP, lol]. And probably Bernkastel as well, by extension. I’m not sure exactly how that’ll play out, especially since in Umineko, Featherine was more of a passive observer than anything else, but still, the idea of them being directly involved in Gou’s story is extremely interesting to me. Mainly just because it makes me wonder if maybe they’re setting up for an Umineko remake, since it’d feel kinda weird to bring up Featherine if they aren’t.

I’m kinda worried that Featherine coming into play would alienate pretty much everyone on both sides of the fandom, since it might seem confusing to new fans, and irritating to old fans who don’t want Higurashi and Umineko stuff to get merged together to that extent. So I hope they pull it off well.

At the very least, I think Bernkastel would work fine if they make her into a major part of Gou’s story. She’s technically the one who created the timeline where Takano’s parents survived, if they follow up on that here, and also she’s literally Rika, so it’d probably be pretty easy for new fans to understand their connection and any emotional stakes involved in them getting into conflict with each other.

I’m not really sure at all exactly what their motives might be for throwing Rika back into the loop, but that’ll probably be the core of what Gou’s endgame is about.

One thing that’s interesting, though, is that Rika was a teenager when she died and woke up in the fragment world with Hanyuu, and I think Ryukishi’s implied that we’ll find out more about that later on. So I think the circumstances behind her death as a teenager will also be a big deal.

Going by how she was apparently wearing the same uniform as Shion, it makes me wonder if maybe she got bullied into suicide, or if maybe Satoko did, and Rika fell into despair afterward and killed herself. Which kinda makes me wonder if maybe part of the whole story and message this time around will be about Rika struggling to come to terms with actually moving on with her life after leaving the loop. Maybe for a variety of reasons she just isn’t able to cope with it, and without really realizing it she just wants to return to the time loop where she at least got to hang out with her friends in a comfortable, familiar environment. But who knows, lol.

If Featherine does end up being important here, I hope they make her connection to Hanyuu a bit more clear, since that’s always been a bit vague. It’d also make me wonder if they’ll also elaborate on Lambdadelta and her whole history with Bernkastel, but I really can’t imagine how they’d have her show up without her completely clashing with Higurashi’s whole aesthetic and tone.

Anyway, I could probably make a whole separate post about my feelings on a theoretical Umineko anime remake and what I’d want and expect from that.

Also, before I forget, my current prediction for the next arc in Gou is that it’ll basically just be Tatarigoroshi, but this time around they’ll mix in Onikakushi elements with Keiichi learning about all the stuff with Satoshi and becoming paranoid that the whole town’s out to get him. I also think they might move the part with Keiichi’s letter to the reader to the end of that arc. They included part of it in the PVs for Gou, so I assume they’ll include it some way or another, and I think it’d make a lot of sense to have it happen at the end of Gou’s version of the question arcs.

Oh, and I’m also expecting that Himatsubushi will get entirely cut out, since at least if we assume that Takano won’t be the obstacle this time around, there’s no real reason to include anything related to Akasaka, and they’ve already spelled out that Rika’s part of a time loop and knows what’s going on, so all of that foreshadowing from that arc would be kinda pointless here.

So yeah that’s basically all of my predictions, and my thoughts on the whole structure and plot of Gou thus far. But aside from all that, I’ve also just really been enjoying Gou in general. I get why a lot of people dislike how it’s been surprisingly similar to the VN, but I really like it. I think it’s doing a great job of preserving as much of the whole experience of reading the VN as possible, while repackaging it into a more condensed, cinematic format. Rather than being a very slow-burn, dread-filled thriller in the VN, Onidamashi felt more like a concise yet effective horror movie that built up to an abrupt, violent conclusion, so I think that was handled really well.

I’ve also really warmed up to the character designs over the last few weeks. At first they felt a bit too shiny and cute to me, but the more I see them, the more I think they work well, especially in the more serious moments. It’s going for a slightly different sort of vibe to basically any other iteration of the character designs in the franchise, but I like it.

Which also reminds me that my favourite version of the character designs might actually be the ones from the light novels, but that kinda feels like cheating since those are just used for covers and illustrations, lol. But I just really like the simple, atmospheric, painterly style that artist has. I’d love to see a version of the VN sprites done in their style, but that’ll probably happen.

And on the note of the LNs, they’ve recently gotten a new print run to celebrate Gou coming out, so I’ve decided to start importing them. I know I’m not even fluent in Japanese so I can’t even properly read them, but I’ve always loved the artwork for them, so I’ve been wanting to own them, but I think they were all out of print before Gou came out. Maybe they’ll eventually get released in English, but I don’t want to risk it. It’s a lot more likely that the Gou manga will get released in English sometime next year, so I’ll probably wait for that instead of importing it in Japanese.

[Also, I recently bought the VN on Steam since it’s on sale and the first arc is for free at the moment, so I’m gonna start rereading that soon to compare it more thoroughly to Gou]

Anyway, this got MUCH longer than I would have wanted it to be, but that’s what I get for waiting so long to start talking about this, lol.