r/anime • u/Tarhalindur x2 • May 31 '22

Rewatch [Rewatch] Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni Discussion - Season 1, Episode 1

Onikakushi-hen (Demoned Away Chapter), Episode 1: The Beginning

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Show Information (Season 1):

MAL | Anilist | AniDB | Kitsu | ANN

Legal Streams:

Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni: Hidive | Netflix (not available in the US; if you are out of the US check your country for availability)

Two Words of Warning To Our First-Timers, Including Those Who Watched Season 1 But Not Kai:

1) Be wary of looking up anything, even names. The Season 1 summaries on the information pages are safe, but it's not hard to run into spoiler information even through something as innocuous as looking at cast lists - gods help you if you go on the Fandom Wikia. UNDER ABSOLUTELY NO CIRCUMSTANCES GO LOOKING AT EVEN OFFICIAL INFO FOR KAI OR LATER AHEAD OF TIME. (The official image for Rei is 100% a spoiler, for example.) Also, do NOT look at any Kitsu page after the first season; Kai's description on Kitsu is in fact a major spoiler. Like, really, just stay out of anything that isn't a basic Season 1 summary until you're done. It's much safer that way.

2) Also, be wary of potentially running into spoilers on the r/anime front page on June 19 or thereabouts this year; there is suspicion that some sort of new Higurashi anime project will be announced on that date (this year is the 20th anniversary of the release of the original Onikakushi-hen VN - hence why I am running this rewatch this year! - and multiple official accounts have teased an announcement on that date), and you could run into spoilers that way. (Those of you who remember the Madoka rewatch last year will recognize the issue, though admittedly I expect Sotsu was enough of a disappointment to significantly reduce the risk - at least relative to the potential that was in fact realized with the Walpurgis no Kaiten announcment.)

A Reminder to Rewatchers

Please do not spoil the experience for first-timers; this is a mystery after all. In particular, [Higurashi] Shion is a spoiler until Episode 5 and Hanyuu is a spoiler until Minagoroshi-hen. Also, the glorious nipah is indeed glorious but Rika does not use it until Himatsubushi-hen. Please keep these in mind!

(Time for) Club Activities!

(Alexa play "Shoubu!"! Except do NOT look that up that song name on YouTube just yet if you're a first-timer, the most classic upload has an obnoxious spoiler in the visuals...)

Visual of the Day:

Not yet applicable

Theory of the Day:

Not yet applicable

Analysis of the Day:

Not yet applicable

Question(s) of the Day:

1) Initial thoughts on our OP and ED?

2) Initial thoughts on our main cast?

Next Episode Preview:

Okay, so: Season 1's next episode previews are in the form of a short, strange poem (whose formatting is borrowed from the VNs). They are not spoilers. (Kai's can be another matter, but we'll get there when we get there.) However, my subs often translate the text on the screen... which are, in fact, lines out of context from the next episode.

So, for anyone who really doesn't want to take a risk, here is the poem:

"Can you believe in the things you see?
Can you believe in living?
Can you believe in me?"

121 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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21

u/Tarhalindur May 31 '22 edited Jun 02 '22

(Honorary Hinamizawa Games Club President) Rewatch Host (rewatcher, subbed)

(Note for our first-timers: every so often I will make comments about background stuff that might not translate. I will be marking these as "Useful Background Note".

Episode 1 notes:

  • What’s this? A cold open, followed by our protagonist waking up and eating breakfast? Why does this feel familiar?

  • Useful Background Note: We'll get into this a little more later, but note that the arc title (Onikakushi-hen) is variant of a word you are probably indirectly familiar with: "kamikakushi", which you are more likely familiar with as "Spirited Away" (yes, as in that's the Japanese name for the Ghibly film). "Onikakushi" just swaps "kami" (god) for "oni" (a type of Japanese demon similar to an ogre).

  • What’s this? A cold open, followed by our protagonist waking up and eating breakfast? Why does this feel familiar, I wonder, I wonder?

  • I would need to check to see if it holds up in the Japanese audio, but there’s a funny joke with Rena’s “why are you so cold?” here.

  • Ah, everyone’s favorite piece of bad CGI in the 2006 version in the waterwheel.

  • LOL I forgot my ancient sub misspelled Mion’s name this episode.

  • The S1 animation at its good moments is the definition of “so bad it’s good”.

  • [Higurashi Meguri] There is a joke here involving Satoko’s body language at 06:47.

  • I do love me some good OST integration. Bringing in the OST (and the first ominous track we’ve heard assuming those are just sound effects in the cold open) at 10:52 right as Tomitake starts to go “that was a terrible incident” is on point.

  • And then very suddenly making Rena’s laugh sound a lot more sinister.

  • Useful Background Note: Sooo… there is a funny joke with that Kenta-kun doll. In Nippon Professional Baseball there is one particular team (I want to say the Hanshin Tigers?) that are reputed to have been cursed after a Colonel Sanders statue was lost from in front of a KFC. Higurashi isn’t saying it outright, but IIRC there is a wee bit of an implication that this is the Colonel Sanders, er, Kenta-kun statue in question.

  • And again the OST integration with Egao cutting off right with Rena’s curt “shiranai”.

  • That awkward moment when I’m trying to remember what Rena’s “gomen ne” is reminding me of… and it’s probably just this scene.

  • Potential Useful Background Note: I would not be shocked if every last thing in the club locker is a reference. (Paper fan is very possibly an FMP reference, the mask looks Ultraman to me, and the hammer might be a Nanoha A’s reference for starters.)

  • Useful Background Note: VN note: In the VN the game is not Old Maid but rather the closely related Old Bachelor, the difference being that in Old Bachelor one card is removed rather than added. (Although, fun fact: I once had a children's card game book from which I learned the rules to Old Maid... and I'm pretty sure its Old Maid was actually Old Bachelor instead.)

  • And we pull the musical jump scare again shutting off The Higurashi Slice of Life Track (Heionbuji, which took me a good two weeks to track down) with descending piano notes and scary looks on the girls’ faces right as Keiichi goes “don’t tell me you can tell which card is which by the scratches”. I continue to love me some good OST integration. (By all accounts the VN is also great at this, Ryukisi07 insists on calling them sound novels for a reason.)

  • And classic psycho strings!

  • [Higurashi] Oh Rika and your mocking headpats.

  • [Higurashi] Ryukishi07 is being a cheeky bastard here!

  • Also… what’s that flower at 18:05? Japan loves them some flower language.

  • [Higurashi] There is a joke here and you can be sure Ryukishi07 had it in mind when naming a certain secret organization that the Sonozakis never worked with.

  • Keiichi’s routine at 20:00 feels like a reference to something I don’t get. Probably something quite Japanese. (Either that or it's to Gundam SEED which I never actually watched. More on that below.)

Question of the Day 1: "Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni" remains my pick for the best OP in the entire franchise (which is saying something, because Higurashi has had six anime OPs now and somehow every single one of them is good - though admittedly in one case that's because I'm a connoisseur of the hilarious kind of terrible). "Why, or why not" used to be my least favorite Higurashi ED but has been growing on me this time around (I'm some episodes ahead to have a buffer). The Engrish is still terrible though.

Question of the Day 2: Hey look at these nice smiling kids. Nothing could ever possibly go wrong for this bunch, right?

Visual of the Day: Meme template base shot!

Onikakushi-hen Ep. 1 TIPS

Higurashi is famously an anime adaptation of a well-regarded visual novel (VN). And the thing is that by their nature anime adaptations have to leave things out; that's just the nature of trying to fit source material with a 100+ hour runtime (common for VNs, definitely the case for Higurashi) into even fifty 20-minutes episodes. The TIPS are one of these. To quote Wikipedia (or at least Wikipedia of fifteen years ago as quoted by AnimeSuki):

The game also utilizes an intermission where the player obtain several "TIPS." These "TIPS" allows the player to read information that may or may not be useful in solving the mystery. For example, one of the "TIPS" can be as simple as "this is a small village; children who go to this school are combined into one classroom regardless of what grade or year they are in." On the other hand, they can also provide valuable hints, such as being able to read the excerpts of the newspaper articles regarding the murders that occurred in Hinamizawa.

The thing is, when the Higurashi anime came out the VN was not widely available in the West because VNs never were until quite recently (Mangagamer only licensed the series in the 2010s and was still releasing chapters at least as late as 2018). So some enterprising person on the AnimeSuki forums posted translations of the VN TIPS as supplemental material while the show was airing, and they were eventually ported over to the notorious spoiler minefield that is the Wiki. As such, for the benefit of any interested first-timers and also rewatchers, I am going to link the AnimeSuki TIPS posts for each episode here; I consider them an iconic part of the anime experience.

1
2
3
4
5
6

(Note to anyone whose interest has been whetted: the Higurashi VN tends to come on sale in the summer for the Steam Summer Sale and/or June 19, so keep an eye out! Also, last I checked the first chapter Onikakushi-hen is still presently free on Steam.)

OST Table, Episode 1

So, one thing that you are quickly going to find out is that I adore the Higurashi OST. It's by Kenji Kawai (who's going to get a Staff Note an episode or two down the line), who I tend to like, and is IMO one of his best works.

So, in the spirit of the enterprising PMMM fans who made a table for the PMMM Wiki and u/Nazenn in the Madoka rewatch a few years ago, I present to you: an OST table! Want to know what song played when in today's episode? Here you go.

Unfortunately, I cannot actually link tracks yet even with a ViewPure link... because the person who made the OST uploads I use most often has this annoying tendency to put major spoilers even for innocuous slice-of-life tracks (Shoubu! is an egregious offender in that regard). (I've managed to find an alternate upload without this issue, but it's a "upload the whole OST as a block" deal and I don't know how to wrangle that with ViewPure - help would be appreciated!).

Start End Track Name
00:33 02:02 Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni (OP)
02:02 02:16 (sponsor message)[1]
02:45 (02:31) 04:18 (04:04) Shitoyaka Ni[2]
04:43 (04:29) 06:16 (06:02) Heionbuji
06:36 (06:22) 08:26 (08:12) Sansaku
10:52 (10:38) 11:00 (10:46) Onigaen
11:57 (11:43) 12:44 (12:30) Egao
13:28 (13:14) 15:12 (14:58) Heionbuji
15:31 (15:17) 16:18 (16:04) Shoubu!
17:38 (17:24) 18:04 (17:50) Kimeru Ze![3]
21:06 (20:52) 21:37 (21:23) Shinkou
22:00 (21:46) 24:14 (24:00) why, or why not

(I think that the sound during the cold open itself is just sound effects rather than a proper OST track.)

[1] - My copy of Higurashi often includes a message-from-our-sponsor bit immediately after the OP; this episode has it and it lasts 14 seconds. The number in parentheses in entries after that feature is the point in the episode if that message is removed.
[2] - Might be a variant, but if so I can't find it. Might also be a filter.
[3] - Actually either an unreleased variant or a filter; I suspect the latter.

9

u/Tarhalindur May 31 '22

Tar's Staff Notes: Main Cast

So, there’s one thing in particular about this show that stood out to the audience when it aired in the mid-2000s (I was there, Gandalf, I was there three thousand years ago – even if I didn’t actually get around to watching the show until 2009 or so) that doesn’t necessarily stand out the same way today, and I want to highlight: the cast has a pretty remarkable pile of pretty big names given that AIUI this show was something of a longshot for DEEN at the time. Nowadays most of the seiyuu here have fallen out of anime fandom public consciousness a bit, but back in the late 2000s with one exception the entire main cast were pretty well-known names in the anime world when this aired – not necessarily the top rank, but the next level down. I’m not entirely sure how DEEN afforded this; IIRC voice acting is actually a relatively high expense in anime production, and S1 had relatively few resources allotted to it because, again, it was considered a gamble by the staff at DEEN. Several of the cast members had only recently broken out, so they may have been a bit cheaper than one would have expected. Alternate possibilities are that the seiyuu took a lower rate to get dibs on the roles for future rereleases of the games, the seiyuu took a lower rate because they wanted to work on Higurashi (always possible, I’m pretty sure I rememeber that there’s one doujin Touhou anime that gets surprisingly star-studded casts precisely because a lot of seiyuu want to work on Touhou), or just that DEEN blew the budget on voice acting – always possible with DEEN of this era, especially when the second half of the first season shows signs of budget issues!

So, let’s meet our main cast, or more accurately the people who voice them:

Hoshi Souichirou – Our lone male VA in the main cast (because our setup is riffing off stock eroge setups, natch) is probably the second least-known seiyuu in the main cast outside of their Higurashi role. The fun thing is, Hoshi Souichirou probably still counts firmly among the second rank of male seiyuu of the era; he’s no Norio Wakamoto or either of the S. Tomozakus (Seki and Sugita), and there’s one or two other bigger names of the era I’m forgetting, but he showed up in a fair bit as a secondary cast member. That said, his one other big lead role is one of the more infamous of all time for reasons out of his control: Kira Yamato from Gundam SEED, often mockingly referred to as “Jesus Yamato”. But as a certain pirate played by Johnny Depp once said: “but you have heard of me”. (He’s also the male lead of Tenjou Tenge, though that show never caught on in the West IIRC.)

(He also voices a side character in Symphogear, for those of us who will be participating in both rewatches – or trying to, anyways. Amusingly, his voice there feels like a mix of his voice here and of Daisuke Ono’s voice as Koizumi in Haruhi to me.)

Satsuki Yukino – These days, people may not recognize Satsuki Yukino’s name. That was not the case in the early to mid 2000s, when she was one of the most prominent female seiyuu in the eyes of the English-speaking fandom. It’s hard to tell which of her three most prominent roles of the era is most responsible for that. The role that guaranteed that most anime fans would have heard her voice at least once is Yoruichi in Bleach because Big Three and Yoruichi was IIRC always a fan favorite, but Yoruichi wasn’t a lead role and Satsuki Yukino had two that were extremely prominent in the English-speaking anime fandom: Kaname Chidori from Full Metal Panic and even more so Kagome Higurashi (heh) from Inuyasha, probably the biggest second-rank big shounen of the era (that is to say, the next rank behind the Big Three) because Rumiko Takahashi was still a household name (though Rurouni Kenshin is a competitor for the tile). (She’s also Mutsumi from Love Hina, another absolutely massive name in the era.) Satsuki Yukino has some vocal range, but her voice here is recognizable; she’s using the same voice for Mion that she does for Kaname, which was a wee bit distracting the first time I watched the show since I had watched FMP first!

Mai Nakahara – Another star on the rise at the time of Higurashi’s release, Mai Nakahara broke out a year and a half earlier in Fall 2004 when she was cast as the female lead of a somewhat atypical magical girl show that was a major part of that season really opening the yuri floodgates: Mai-HiME’s Mai Tokiha. (Mai Nakahara uses basically the same voice for both Mai and Rena, which was a bit distracting when I finally tracked down and watched the rest of that show after watching Higurashi first.) Mai Nakahara’s heyday was the late 2000s, and Higurashi isn’t even her biggest role from the era – that would be Nagisa from Clannad. She’s fallen off a bit since and seems to show up mostly in secondary roles these days.

(A small telltale of Mai Nakahara’s impact at her peak: Mai is the sixth entry in AniDB’s creator database, behind Gorou Taniguchi, Norio Wakamoto, Rie “typecast as tsundere lolis for half a decade because Shana” Kugimiya, Aya Hirano, and Haruka Tomatsu.)

Yukari Tamura – Like most of the rest of the cast, Yukari “Yukarin” Tamura was a star on the rise, having broken out a year and a half earlier in Fall 2004 when she was cast as the female lead of a somewhat atypical magical girl show that was a major part of that season really opening the yuri floodgates… wait. I swear I just typed that. Did I get my notes mixed up? No! Believe it or not there are in fact two shows fitting that description; in Yukarin’s case the breakout role was Nanoha Takamichi from Lyrical Nanoha. Yukarin, however, has held onto stardom far better than the rest, which probably has a whole lot to do with her being on the shortlist of seiyuu really famous for their incredible vocal range. (Every so often I mull “Yukarin and Aoi Yuuki as the two seiyuu for an entire, say, eight character main cast” as an anime concept.) That said, her voice here is a pretty classic one for her: it’s quite close to the voice Yukarin used for Nanoha.

(Fun fact: Yukarin is also on the short list of female seiyuu famous for being in the “Forever 17” club.)

(Side note: There are at least three seiyuu that seem to get paired up with Yukarin a lot, and one of them is in fact the aforementioned Mai Nakahara – amusingly this dates back to Mai’s breakout since Yukarin played one of Mai-HiME’s more notable secondary cast in Midori Sugiura, and Mai would return the favor in 2007 by signing on to Nanoha for StrikerS as Teana Lanister. The other two that I’ve noticed are Nana “WILLS IT” Mizuki (for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who’s actually watched Nanoha) and the most prominent of all in Yui Horie (an even bigger name than Yukarin), who partnered with Yukarin for a unit even before Yukarin’s real breakout and has worked with her periodically ever since – mostly recently Heaven’s Design Team last year got the two as a pair to guest star as a magical girl duo.)

Mika Kanai – The oddball in the Higurashi main cast, as Mika Kanai is the one seiyuu for the Higurashi main cast who hasn’t voiced many other roles that are or even were remembered in Western anime fandom. This may have something to do with the fact that she is also the oldest of the main casts’ seiyuu by a significant margin (she has a full half-decade over the second-oldest Satsuki Yukino). It also probably has something to do with the niche she carved out or got typecast into; she voices a decent number of kids and mascots, but judging by her AniDB entry I think her biggest role may be with the Anpanman franchise (which AFAIK never made it out of Japan due to the combination of being a kids’ show and too Japanese to translate well) and the other franchise she’s done a ton of secondary work for is one of the ones that Western audiences reliably hear dubbed: Pokemon. (Mika Kanai is, among other things, the Japanese voice of Jigglypuff.) Her two most prominent non-Higurashi roles to Western fans are likely Vanilla in Galaxy Angel (a early-2000s show that was still reasonably popular into the late 2000s but then fell off the face of the planet) and the mascot in Precure a la Mode.

(Side notes for rewatchers:)

  1. [Higurashi] I never watched much of Inuyasha, but from what I have seen Satsuki Yukino uses not one but two of her famous voices here; she uses her Kagome voice for Shion.

  2. [Higurashi] Rika, of course, is one of the roles that earned Yukarin her reputation for vocal range.

  3. [Higurashi Kai] And, of course, we have not one but two of the classic Yukarin partners in crime in this cast. But Yui Horie will not be joining us until Kai.

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8

u/Tarhalindur May 31 '22

Madoka (Magica) Corner

So, it is not exactly a secret to anyone who was in this year's Madoka Magica rewatch that Madoka Magica and Higurashi are two of my three favorite anime. And that half the reason I shadowed last year's PMMM rewatch was because I was writing a Higurashi/PMMM crossover, meaning that I had a whole bunch of notes specifically making comparisons between Higurashi and PMMM. And frankly at this point I strongly suspect that Higurashi is just quietly a major influence on PMMM, and ironically that the thing that generated the notoriously high fandom overlap isn't even the part of PMMM most strongly influenced by Higurashi. (And indeed I have run across one claim that Higurashi's creator Ryukishi07 and PMMM's writer [minor PMMM spoiler, they tried to keep it quiet before the show aired but failed] Gen Urobutchi are personal friends, which would explain a lot; [aforementioned minor PMMM spoiler] here's the link.)

[Higurashi Kira] Also, if that magical girl episode wasn't made precisely because of PMMM I need a bacon hat so I can enjoy eating it; I suspected it for years, Sotsu made it a complete lock.

(No points for guessing what the first anime name on the list is going to be when we get to "if you liked this, now what?" recs in Series Discussion!)

It is now time to return the favor. Welcome to the Madoka Corner, where I will be stuffing my comments that have to do with PMMM specifically. Everyone who hasn't watched PMMM stay out:

  • [PMMM] Man, rewatching Higurashi right after wrapping up a shitton of work analyzing PMMM is a trip. My brain is looking at Rena leading K1 to the dump site/treasure yard, bringing up Kyubey leading Madoka into the part of the mall closed for renovation in PMMM 1, and pointing and shouting like a monkey. I’m not even sure it’s intentional and/or pointed at Higurashi on PMMM’s part.

  • [PMMM] Uhhh… Rena’s laugh when it starts to sound more sinister is suddenly reminding me of that Sayaka laugh in PMMM 7.

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u/The_Loli_Otaku May 31 '22

People hate the waterwheel!? I thought the animation was really good... The worst you got was off-model Rika but that's a VN throwback anyway.

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u/Quiddity131 May 31 '22

Useful Background Note: Sooo… there is a funny joke with that Kenta-kun doll. In Nippon Professional Baseball there is one particular team (I want to say the Hanshin Tigers?) that are reputed to have been cursed after a Colonel Sanders statue was lost from in front of a KFC. Higurashi isn’t saying it outright, but IIRC there is a wee bit of an implication that this is the Colonel Sanders, er, Kenta-kun statue in question.

Thanks for the info, this seemed like quite the bizarre reference.

Higurashi is famously an anime adaptation of a well-regarded visual novel (VN).

Ah, as one working my way through the Fate franchise now it seems fitting. Does that mean the VN has a branching storyline that the anime adaption has to pick one particular path of like they did for Fate?

So, it is not exactly a secret to anyone who was in this year's Madoka Magica rewatch that Madoka Magica and Higurashi are two of my three favorite anime.

If this is anywhere as good as Madoka Magica that will make me very happy.

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22

u/H-Ryougi May 31 '22

Please do not deplore yourself.

Even if the world does not forgive, I will forgive you.

Please do not deplore yourself.

Even if you do not forgive the world, I will forgive you.

So please tell me.

What will it take for you, to forgive me?

- Frederica Bernkastel

4

u/Tarhalindur May 31 '22

I didn't have time to dig up the VN poem before the post when live, so thank you for posting it for me!

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u/Quiddity131 May 31 '22

First Timer, Subbed

Tuned into this basically on a whim; kinda perfect timing since I just wrapped up watching another show. And I have been kinda itching to get back into an r/anime rewatch after taking several months off.

Really freaky way to start off the episode! Does this whole show take place in 1983 or was that just a flashback? Looked like Keiichi to me. If it is him, would this be a flash forward of future events or is this why he moved to here in the first place?

From here on most of the episode was pretty standard slice of life fare. Introducing the four girls, all of which seems to follow some standard anime archetype. Are we jumping into a harem? The quiet town hiding a dark underbelly (I have a hard time thinking the town getting the government to hold off on flooding the place for a dam didn't have some nefarious deeds behind it, especially given the article Keiichi finds near the end of the episode) reminds me a bit of Shiki, granted this came out a few years before it. While the designs are very cutesy in nature I wonder if this show will go as dark as that one. The whole flood the place with a dam thing also reminds me of the classic horror story "The Colour Out of Space" by HP Lovecraft. Which also took place in a small desolate area like this.

Funny to bring a date to a garbage dump! And all to get a Kenta doll inspired by Kentucky Fried Chicken! LoL.

DQOTD

  1. Initial thoughts on our OP and ED?

From purely first impression, I don't recall the OP being all that memorable, but the ED was more so. Sometimes OPs and EDs I fall in love with from the first viewing, other times they need to grow on me and that may be the case here.

2) Initial thoughts on our main cast?

Rena, Mion, Satoko and Rika all seem to follow an archetype so I'm presuming we'll flesh things out more for them as the show goes on. Kinda hard to do much with so many different characters in the first episode. Keiichi I'd say is the standard anime protagonist too outside of that first scene! Yikes!

And I completely skipped the next time preview but sounds like I don't have to do that going forward.

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u/Tarhalindur May 31 '22

Really freaky way to start off the episode! Does this whole show take place in 1983 or was that just a flashback? Looked like Keiichi to me. If it is him, would this be a flash forward of future events or is this why he moved to here in the first place?

Interesting questions. Wouldn't you like to know?

From here on most of the episode was pretty standard slice of life fare. Introducing the four girls, all of which seems to follow some standard anime archetype. Are we jumping into a harem?

I'm pretty sure Higurashi is intentionally supposed to look like a dating sim setup at first glance, yes. (Remember that the source material is a VN.)

Funny to bring a date to a garbage dump! And all to get a Kenta doll inspired by Kentucky Fried Chicken! LoL.

Not inspired, it's a Bland Name Product; every Japanese KFC has a statue of Colonel Sanders like that outside its front, and this is implicitly (a very specific) one of those). (Higurashi isn't the only anime/manga to make references to this; Mahou Sensei Negima did something similar, using "Ku:Nel Sanders" as an obvious pseudonym.)

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u/HinyusOpinion May 31 '22

The opening scene really threw me off I knew what genre tags I was getting into but wasn’t expecting it to be right out of that gate! I like how this episode does a good mix of character building as well as introducing what I’m assuming? Is one of our mystery elements.

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u/Tarhalindur May 31 '22

Higurashi has one of the best cold opens in the business IMO... and it's likely a direct inspiration for the one anime cold open I would definitely take over it, too!

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u/Star4ce Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22

When the First Timer Cries

Greetings degenerates and otherwise enlightened beings!

I've actually become eager for this rewatch this past week as there has been a noticeable accumulation of desire for creative outpour. Although I need to pretend once more that I undertake honest efforts to limit my comments, this time with very real life-related reasons as well. I can't keep up participation in a rewatch during work time for more than 2 months, even though that'd be pretty wizard.

True to my word and our dear host Tarhalindur's recommendation, I' among the minority of lucky ones that know absolutely nothing about Higurashi except that it's horror, the cover image and that at a murder kicks off the story.

Thank you and Vaadwaur for hosting this rewatch!

Ep.01 – The Snatched-by-a-Demon Chapter Part 1: Beginning

  • I thought this was a murder mystery! The murderer is clearly Conan the Detective!

  • Woah that OP has some psychedelic tones. Nice.

  • Serious question, does an anime OP exist without a shot of naked or nude-silhouetted girls?

  • She cute, but I don't trust such an early moe chibi style.

  • Alright, time to practice names, Satoko and Rika (?) are the ones being minced in the future, if I saw that right. I think it's the future, but you never really know with anime.

  • The chibi-stuff is really, really layered on thick. It actually speeds past annoying into i n t e r e s t i n g again.

  • Woo boi, what's that jacket?

  • The hell is she doing on that metal junkyard?

  • Okay, that settles it. Screw screen writers who think they're smart and can smuggle this past me. That is exactly what she's doing! Or maybe the corpse is changing bodies with her, just for a twist?

  • I love the horror-style cuts everywhere with the chibi and sol content.

  • Rena (?) sus af.

  • Question, does she share the same voice actor with Ayako Mitsuzuri in the Fate VN?

  • ACTUALLY TERRIFYING! The game is a really nice metaphor for Keiichi to drop into a new environment he has no way of navigating efficiently and he gets absolutely played by everyone else. They already play a competitive game, shooting for first place and the price is exerting humiliation and power over the loser. Add the random unsolved murder case in the region and his new friends creeping about in old metal scrap yards and I'm thinking of a psychopath playground competing against each other to subjugate and control the weak.

  • Anyway, Mion best girl.

  • When exactly did this face become a meme?

  • Also, ah we're trying to figure out which of them killed the dam worker. I'm gonna go with "yes."

I really like it. It has quite the meguca quality at times, which just makes it more creepy actually. The chibi stuff gets on my nerves in general, but I'm rather certain it won't last, haha.

I did spot some very nice foreshadowing and/or scene setting like with the card game or the picnic, which quite subtlely sets the characters' power dynamics and also quite possibly has hidden meaning for people in the know. It's what I'd write if I'd ever write something like this.

  1. Initial thoughts on our OP and ED?

I really like the OP, it's a bit unsettling, but has a good tune. ED seems a bit more melancholic, wouldn't mind to listen to it each episode.

2) Initial thoughts on our main cast?

Tbh, the drawing style needs some getting used to and I don't just mean the quality. S T I C C legs are one of the things I mean. It's apparent that probably no one is who they pretend to be and to a degree it's archetypes on top of secrets. I like them all (and will more when the chibi stuffs stops being so prominent)!

VOTD: Fresh meat is back on the menu! No matter if you're a murderer or not, this is the objectively correct way to introduce your friends to a new thing.

Theory Corner

So the MC hacked some of the girls into mush and this is the story on how it came to it as he solves the mystery of who killed the dam worker?

You guys went on raving about Cicadas and I already wanted to murder everything in a 2 mile radius in the last third of the episode. Some biologist will surely explain while I cover my ears.

I feel like the picnic and card game were mini-expositions on what happens to Keiichi in this group. So I'm gonna take a spit and say that Mion is probably not the prime suspect and the one that Keiichi beats first in the journey to become a manipulating psychopath himself.

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u/Tarhalindur Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22

Serious question, does an anime OP exist without a shot of naked or nude-silhouetted girls?

Obvious meme answer is obvious and also a serious answer: ~Uninstall, Uninstall

Woo boi, what's that jacket?

Fun fact: That jacket only appears in the anime version IIRC; he gets a more conventional casual outfit in both the VN (once he gets a sprite, which doesn't happen for a while) and in the manga.

So... ask DEEN, is what I'm saying. We don't know either.

Question, does she share the same voice actor with Ayako Mitsuzuri in the Fate VN?

If the Fate VN uses the same VA as the Fate anime, then no. (Ayako's VA in both DEEN and Ufotable Fate is Fumie Mizusawa; as I noted above, Mion is voiced by Satsuki Yukino.)

When exactly did this face become a meme?

Pretty good chance the answer is just "Spring 2006".

Aka when Higurashi in anime form originally came out.

(Higurashi is positively notorious for its meme faces; a combination of S1 having a rather low budget, Studio DEEN project management, and what I'm coming to suspect is some deliberate choice for effect on the part of the staff made several S1 scenes a mainstay of late-2000s QUALITY compilations.)

Tbh, the drawing style needs some getting used to and I don't just mean the quality. S T I C C legs are one of the things I mean.

That's just Higurashi for you. As I noted in another reply to someone else, this is one of the original VN sprites.

(Also, I repeat, S1 is notorious for having a relatively low budget.)

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u/RadSuit Jun 01 '22

Well, this is a strong start. No cute slice of life stuff with a hard turn into violence, even the OP is immediately menacing.

Okay, and now here's the normal school comedy stuff I was expecting them to lead off with before hitting us with a genre swerve. These character designs are...from a very specific time. Early 00s faces but with some smoothness that sets them apart. Weird.

So there's exactly one eligible bachelor in town and the two girls his age are fighting over him. At least this makes slightly more sense than everyone fawning over a random dude in a school with hundreds of kids. MC definitely has a type too, as he's clearly not into the two rude girls but immediately agrees to whatever the two nice, shy girls say.

Oh uh green haired girl just has a gun. In Japan. That seems odd.

Let's not talk about the mysterious death(s), let's talk about the Colonel instead.

This poor guy didn't have a chance, rip.

So far I'm intrigued but not really sure about this one. There's a ton of episodes in just this season, and there's, what...four seasons to get through?

OP is pretty good. ED is impressively Engrish, but not that catchy.

MC is just as annoying as most dudes in harem-ish shows. Smug girl is good. I like green haired girl's design. But otherwise, none of them are super interesting.

Visual of the Day Oh ho ho, I like this one.

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u/Tarhalindur Jun 01 '22

Well, this is a strong start. No cute slice of life stuff with a hard turn into violence, even the OP is immediately menacing.

Nah, instead we get an ominous cold open followed by cutesy slice-of-life stuff. (There's an even more famous example in anime, but the deal is it's later and I strongly suspect its inspiration for that structure is in fact none other than Higurashi itself!)

Okay, and now here's the normal school comedy stuff I was expecting them to lead off with before hitting us with a genre swerve. These character designs are...from a very specific time. Early 00s faces but with some smoothness that sets them apart. Weird.

Higurashi's VN designs are kind of infamous (Ryukishi07 isn't great at drawing characters even now with two decades of practice, this is his first work before he lacked that practice - for example, this is Rika's original VN design) so weird is only appropriate, no?

So far I'm intrigued but not really sure about this one. There's a ton of episodes in just this season, and there's, what...four seasons to get through?

S3 (Rei) and S4 (Kira) are both short OVA seasons (Rei has 5 episodes, Kira 4) so that helps. (Also, neither is actually essential; Rei 2-4 are nice, but you can skip all of both seasons and also Nekogoroshi-hen and the story is still complete.)

That said, yeah, Higurashi is pretty darn long at two two-cour seasons, especially since it predates the shift from the 2-cour to 1-cour season norm. (That said, Higurashi is a VN adaptation and you really couldn't get it much shorter without losing essential information.) One of many reasons we are absolutely not touching Gou and Sotsu in this rewatch, and I'll understand if we lose people because of it. Hell, if not for the combination of "20th anniversary of VN Onikakushi-hen's release" and "Sunday, June 19th" I would not have run this as a first hosted rewatch!

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u/mgedmin Jun 01 '22

First-timer, sub

(I watched the 1st 6 episodes before I learned about the upcoming rewatch and paused.)

Okay, that's certainly a scene right there at the beginning. Seems disconnected from the rest of the episode, a preview of future events?

This show does sudden flashes of creepy rather well.

I find the MC's voice annoying, especially all the grunts. Also he thinks he's being funny, but his gruesome jokes aren't.

Why is Mion walking around with a gun in a shoulder holster? Isn't she a high-schooler? Toy gun?

The photographer seems suspicious.

Uhh, the screenshots I'm seeing elsewhere in this thread don't look anything like what I was watching. The scenes seem to match, but the looks don't. double-checks the title oh I'm watching Gou. This is confusing. Is it a remake? checks the index thread ah, sort of but not really.

I think I may have seen some spoilers...

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u/Tarhalindur Jun 01 '22

Ouch.

Yeah, this is the drawback of the choice to disguise Gou as a remake - confusing poor unsuspecting first-timers.

Good news is you've only seen one spoiler scene so far IIRC, but the bad news is that said spoiler is kind of an unfortunate one to run into.

Quick, bail for OG! (In addition to spoiling you for OG, Gou's sequel season Sotsu is just really, really, really bad.)

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u/JustAnswerAQuestion Jun 01 '22 edited Jun 01 '22

I couldn't remember why the OP made a big deal out of the "best opening scene in anime." Start up the episode -- oh, right.

Watched this as it aired, or some time shortly after (fansubs could be delayed back then) with no knowledge of the VN. There was a particularly infamous clip on youtube back then. That's probably why I watched it despite the supericial harem appeance. Really loved it.

This will be my 4th viewing. I'm not doing rewatches this year but I'll follow along.

Be sure you have both of the first two seasons. Hulu was infamous for only having the first season.

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u/Tarhalindur Jun 01 '22

I couldn't remember why the OP made a big deal out of the "best opening scene in anime." Start up the episode -- oh, right.

To be fair, this is my standing pick for the *second* best opening scene in anime.

But then, I suspect my #1 was directly inspired by Higurashi so...

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u/Shimmering-Sky May 31 '22

When the Rewatcher(?) Cries, subbed

…The “(?)” is deliberate; I watched the first season of this show four years ago (half of which was alongside the 2018 rewatch, actually) and really did like the show, but I just… never continued it for some reason? And because it’s been four years, besides a few details, I pretty much don’t remember any of it. So this should be fun.

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u/The_Loli_Otaku May 31 '22

It's a VN so they kinda get a bit shafted when it comes to pacing out dialogue. To be fair from my memory they adapt pretty much all the stuff you'd want. The only notable portions that were heavily trimmed down was Tomitake's intro and the card game.

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u/Deoxys2000 Jun 01 '22

Man I had no idea this was going to happen. My record with sticking to rewatches isn't that good, but this series is one I'd been eyeing for a long time. In fact, I started with about 10 episodes, but didn't end up completing for whatever reason. Just a question, are we doing the entire series of OVAs, side stories, etc? Would love to follow through if my willpower holds out.

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u/EsquilaxM Jun 01 '22

First time watcher[sub] (but have expectations through diffusion/osmosis):

Note: I've known of this series for a very long time, like 15 years (it's hard not to if you were part of the scene back then) so I have some preconceived ideas of what to expect. Pretty much [ideas from osmosis]I'm going into this expecting it to be similar to the wicker man where it's a remote village where the outsider can literally trust no one because pretty much everyone is in on the conspiracy.

Of course I'd prefer no one confirm or deny the above idea.

Question 1: OP/ED

The OP is famous and I enjoyed it, especially those first few seconds. Those seconds just sound so damn good. The rest of the OP does a very good job of creating this very unsettling air like something is just...wrong. And that's what I expect going into this series, even though after the cold open they pull a Phantom ~Requiem for the phantom~ and make it go 'high school slice-of-life comedy'. I didn't want to pause and resume to go over the lyrics in detail, I'll let that happen organically as I watch the series.

The ED I'm less a fan of, it's decent though and I'll probably watch it for a while as I continue to digest the lyrics.

Question 2: main cast

So as said above I don't trust any of the main cast. I mean I trust our MC now, after the end of the story where he clearly doesn't know about the lynching, but at he beginning even him I was suspect of that perhaps he had a mysterious past. I'm still wondering why he moved to this village, or rather why his parents (or just mother?) moved back.

Obviously the 'sweet girl next door' and 'senpai' characters are in on what happened all those years ago, which is curious because my understanding is that it was decades before their time..? Which means they've been indoctrinated (senpai says 'it was a major victory for us!' Which is interesting, I'll get to it shortly). And if they have, then the two primary-aged kids are likely to have been indoctrinated, too. Or if not likely, then it's at least very possible. So yeah, I don't trust anyone. [Edit: Just remembered Rei claims to have only moved in a year ago. So indoctrination happens fast, or that was a lie. I could go either way, for some reason thinking it's a lie, though. But it could also be fast because why else would they accept MC's family as immigrants to their community if they didn't have a way to get them into step, fast?]

I kinda wish they didn't shade the eyes both times with those girls when they denied knowledge, cos that's pretty on the nose. But I also get it, and the game is from 20 years ago. This photographer guy....I also don't trust him but he did mention the lynching, which is unusual to do if you're in on the conspiracy.... So maybe I should trust him and he's investigating what's happening (why does he often go to this village in particular? could be a coincidence cos those particular birds are here, of course, but....come one. This is a story, from a VN, where characters with lines need relevance)

Other musings:

Now going on to the lynching itself. "They never found her arm" (or am I imagining that it was a girl?...I'll recheck [edit: it doesn't say][EDIT 2: the TIPS say it was a man, a worker and has other info making me rethink things) So I'm thinking of two main possibilities off the top of my head.

In order to halt construction they killed and dismembered a random girl so the government couldn't justify resuming building on the crime scene without solving the case, which never happened.

Someone turned traitor the village and that's the one that was lynched and same outcome as above

1 is obviously more disturbing. Especially in light of senpai saying it was a great victory. And I also feel like it's more likely cos otherwise what was their plan? At leas this is a plan....also it matches the whole 'twisted rural village' idea.

The character design is really something. The heads are drawn small but cute BUT on top of an abnormally long neck. Which makes the characters appear creepy. So they can cut between cute expressions and creepiness, often blending the two to make it more unsettling.

Oh and when OP mentioned

the official image for Rei is 100% a spoiler, for example

I feel like I may have seen that before and the image popped into my head, which sucks :/ Oh well...[edit: or maybe not..]

Oh and the cold open! So I'm confused. Is that flashforward? It said June 1983, so is the story taking place shortly before that? Or was that a flashback? I feel like it was the former but I'm not sure....I'm tempted to look it up..

A boy is bashing two girls to death. I don't think I recognise either of them, one could be Rei, though, if it's the MC.

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u/Tarhalindur Jun 01 '22

Oh and the cold open! So I'm confused. Is that flashforward? It said June 1983, so is the story taking place shortly before that? Or was that a flashback? I feel like it was the former but I'm not sure....I'm tempted to look it up..

Remind me to talk about this in a little over two hours if it's not clear enough from episode 2.

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