Higurashi 1-8
Nov. 1st, 2007 02:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedA horror anime for Halloween. I have seen two whole arcs of this, that totally qualifies me to talk about it! Higurashi (in long: Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, When the Cicadas Cry) is about a boy who moves to certain small town. He befriends four girls, two his own age and two younger. They have fun and play games, etc. Eventually, he learns that in this town, one person is killed and one "spirited away" on the same day each year. The premise sounds straightforward but the anime actually tells the same story several times -- each time, the time span is the same, but the victims and protagonists are different. Also, each time, the "arc" concludes, but in a kind of inconclusive way that leaves you wondering what really happened. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
worldserpent explains it better here.
Super-special spoiler warning: this is a series Charmian refused to spoil, and she is more open-minded about spoilers than anyone I know. So if, you know, the summary intrigues you and you're thinking about maybe watching the show, don't check below the cut. (Though I guess can't spoil anything major, since I've only seen the first eight episodes.)
Spirited Away By Ogres
This arc...really didn't convince me. ^^; Excerpts from MSN:
Subdee says:
what i wonder though
Subdee says:
is why is the protagonist friends with these four girls if,
Subdee says:
the first time someone from out of town, who he DOESN'T EVEN KNOW,
Subdee says:
tells him to be careful around them, he believes him!
Subdee says:
some friendship
/_\ says:
ahahahahaha
/_\ says:
well
Subdee says:
this random detective also shows up and makes him a "mole" for town gossip, which is kind of like o_O so you're deputizing random high school students then?
/_\ says:
if one of my friends occasionally walked around with a big freakin' axe looking scary
/_\ says:
i'd be wary, too
Subdee says:
XD
Subdee says:
but he said they'd need an axe!
Subdee says:
they were trying to dig out the body (of the KFC Colonel) from a pile of trash
Subdee says:
well, with this kind of horror, the conversations can be completely mundane
Subdee says:
and the horror comes from the music, and the protagonist's disturbed expression
Subdee says:
so i wonder why he's so easily disturbed
/_\ says:
ooohhh
/_\ says:
maybe he's the killer :3
Subdee says:
XDXDXD
Subdee says:
that would be funny
Subdee says:
ahhhh, i don't know
Subdee says:
half the power comes from the willingness of the protagonist to believe horrible things about his small-town friends with almost no/purely circumstantial evidence
Subdee says:
but maybe he just has a better sixth sense for these things than i do
So in other words I just wasn't convinced by the actual events of this arc that the horror atmosphere was at all justified. In fact I think "it was all in his head" explains more than it doesn't. On the other hand, you do kind of have to admire the protagonist (and the writers/director/voice actors) for being able to take a completely innocuous statement like "Who was that man you were eating with yesterday, Kei-chan?" and turn it into the most terrifying thing ever. In fact (and in a really neat trick, if Kei-chan's sentiments do turn out to have been unfounded paranoia), the contrast between the banality of what's being said, and what Keiichi (and the viewer) understands it to mean, only makes it more terrifying. Because...his friends are acting as if everything is completely normal, right? EVEN THOUGH THEY'RE REALLY ALL OUT TO KILL HIM.
(Man, I really hope you guys took my warning about spoilers seriously. Because the thing is...the tricks the show uses to create tension are fairly transparent, once you think to look for them. ^^; A big part of why it works is that the AUDIENCE goes in expecting one of the girls to be a murderer as well. In mystery terms you're looking for the killer, and in horror terms it's easy to believe that the inhabitants of a small, superstitious mountain town might be raving lunatics.)
I was pretty tired of Keiichi's "caution" by the end -- especially when he started keeping secrets from his friends and only confessing what he was thinking to Oishi (the detective) and carrying a baseball bat around with him for "protection". Actually, before that, when he hadn't started avoiding his friends yet and was just lying to them, I actually cheered when he said he "didn't feel up to" the club meeting. It was like, good for you! No more of this "oh, nothing's wrong really" fake-smile attitude while passive-aggressively continuing-to-spend-time-with-the-people-you-believe-may-be-trying-to-kill-you. XD; I am normally all for characters who can act normal in such circumstances, but combined with the moe character designs it was really just rubbing me the wrong way -- like he had to hide what he was really thinking from the girls because they are strange alien creatures (also possibly deranged killers) who it is no use explaining things to.
But even after he stops lying to their faces, he STILL doesn't tell them what the problem is! Look, buddy, I know it can be hard to tell your best friends that you think they're crazy murderers, but the silence isn't exactly helping you out here.
There's a point in the fourth (final) episode where Keichii goes home and closes all the windows and locks all the doors! Then the telephone rings. XD I thought: Someone has been reading from the horror-movie playbook.
The major question of this arc is: DID HE BEAT THEM TO DEATH WITH A BAT BECAUSE OF THE DRUGS? Or did he do it before they gave him the drugs? ...If the proof is in the syringe, does that mean that they never got to administer the drugs to him? So it was a pre-emptive beating? The other question is, if it wasn't narcotics, what made him claw out his own throat. (I hope Oishi, listening on the other end of the phone line as a by-this-point-completely-unstrung-Keiichi dies choking on his own blood, suffers horrible guilt-driven nightmares as penance for irresponsibly dragging an uninvolved student into a murder investigation.)
"If you are reading this, I'm probably already dead. Whoever sees this, please discover the truth." --That TOTALLY sounds like a line from a visual-novel-type computer game, doesn't it?
*****
Cotton Drifting
This arc is such a relief this arc is after the last one. -_-; Instead of doubting everyone and keeping everything to himself and spiraling further and further into paranoid delusion, Keiichi talks to his friends (even if only in metaphors) and keeps his head. Also, he doesn't fully trust Shion, who is seriously the right person to not trust in this situation. (So the moral of the last arc was, don't trust what you know, and the moral of this one is, believe your friends before you believe someone you've just met? ...I'm kind of surprised that I'm coming down so hard on the side of "what you know" here -- even including, don't seek forbidden knowledge. Maybe I just really dislike baseless hysteria. -_-;)
Annnnyway, you never really got a sense of why the four on them were friends in the last arc, and in this one, you do. Also, you know what? Keichi's friends are all really awesome. XD; And not at all in a "moe" way, but because they're intelligent, considerate, and strong-minded. The art (and in Rena's case, the airhead act -- though note, she isn't "pretending" when she does this, any more than Mion is "pretending" to be tough) really is deceptive.
Notes from as I was watching (note these will not be coherent if you haven't seen the episodes (and maybe not even then)):
Waiiiit! If Mion works at the restaurant where Keichi discussed the facts of the case with Oishi, that would totally explain how she knew where he'd had lunch that day. (Never mind that this is, like, an alternate universe.) As for knowing about the time when he was in the car, Rena could have easily seen that if she'd glanced out a window at the school parking lot. So there goes one reason Keichi had for suspecting Mion and Rena, blown away in a moment. I really do think it was all in his head.
...Oh, so it isn't Mion who works at the restaurant, but her twin sister. Nevermind then. (Wait a minute, a TWIN SISTER?! Is he really going to fall for that?! ...Ah, no. he isn't. ^^; Okay, no more premature comments from me. XD; Mion's split personality is cute until you realize...holy shit, she has a split personality! o_O;)
And here we see Horror Exhibit C, villagers who use their scary hive mind and identical blank stares to drive off intruders.
LOL, I thought the "jeolousy" of the title was going to be Mion being jealous of Rena for the doll, but instead it's Mion being jealous of Shion. Also: there really is a twin sister ahahaha.
Are we gonna get the full exposition of the curse every time?! It does help you to remember the facts though. (Construction worker, then tourists, then priest, then housewife.) Also: Aha, the first time at the festival he wins a prize for Rena, and the second time he doesn't.
When Shion says "there's something I specifically want you to see" it reminds me of Oishi's "I specifically picked you out of all the people in Hinimigawa." I guess the protagonist is just "special" (lucky him...?) Another thing: the photographer has to be the lookout so that Keiichi can yet again be surrounded by women XD.
Inside the temple: what the hell, that nurse's assistant is MORBID. Are you going to take all this sitting down, Keiichi? She just accused the whole town of ritual cannibalism! ...on the other hand, the shed *is* full of torture implements. (Man. but Shion is *REALLY* evil. I don't want to believe anything she says!)
"Make sure you keep this a secret, Maebara-san." ....Great. More secrets. -_-;
Shion hears things too! Sorry, I'm just really fixated on "people who aren't from Hinamizawa are hallucinating!" as an explanation for all the weird stuff that's going on. (Though...that wouldn't explain how events are replaying. Maybe Oyashirou-sama is giving Kei-chan a second chance? Or multiple second chances? He's already special, it wouldn't surprise me if he also got special treatment from the local god.)
No wonder none of the townspeople talk about it, talking about the murders just makes you crazy and then you end up dead afterward -_-;.
Oishi: Your friend is a yakuza princess.
Maebara: Oh.
...Oh? That's it?! Not even a "Wow, I knew Mion was scary, but I didn't know she was that scary"? What the hell. XD It is kind of cool, though, that knowing his best friend stands to inherit the underworld of the entire surrounding area doesn't change his opinion of her in the slightest.
Okaaaay, that wasn't even a subtle change, but Mion's face suddenly distorted into something totally unrecognizeable! Either he's hallucinating or there's something very, very wrong with Mion. (Or Shion.) "Maybe there's a side to Mion I don't know. That was the first time I thought that." --What, you mean it wasn't when you thought she was inventing a twin sister? Or when you first heard that she's a yakuza princess? No?
How's this for head-warping: Rena explains that the soy sauce bottle on the table was empty and so was the extra kept under the sink! The music swells ominously, and I, remembering the an earlier discussion about ogres and "delicious" sacrifices, think: oh my god, she's going to explain that the soy sauce was for taste.
(...)
The actual explanation: "So I think Rika-chan went over to the neighbors to borrow some soy sauce," Rena blithely continues. Ahahaha. Ahaha. Ha. Of course, to borrow from the neighbor! That's the rational conclusion to make in this situation. (You see how this show has gotten to me.)
There's a much greater sense this time around of the policeman humoring the middle school student. ^^; I was kind of "..." at Keiichi's sudden honorary promotion in the last arc. (And look where it got him!)
I'm...not really following this deal with the village chief either. So because he was gone most of the day the day Shion supposedly told him about the shrine, she couldn't have told him, so she was lying? But he didn't really go missing! All her lie (if it was a lie) accomplished, then, was to plant the idea that telling anyone about what happened at the shrine will make them disappear in Keiichi's mind -- and that didn't turn out to be true, right? So in other words, she lied to keep him quiet. ...Which would mean, omg, that his biggest blunder was telling her (Shion) that he'd told someone else (Rika) about what happened at the shrine. Because Shion wants to keep it quiet. And now Rika's disappeared. Okaaaaay, I do get why this could be important.
Ahem. That's not Mion, THAT'S SHION. The main difference between the two of them is that Mion is a horrible actress. (...omg. That means that, far from SHION being the one who disappeared after the festival, it was actually MION!! ...and she wasn't around in the episodes after that -- Rena was giving her some time to cool off. O_O O_O O_O Mionnnnnn! PLEASE DON'T BE DEAD. ...Man, Shion is LUCKY they didn't ask to see her tatoo. Siiiigh. You really don't want to be going off with her AGAIN, Kei-chan.)
Man, this case just goes on and on. ^^; I was in hysterics when Mion aka Shion was going to drive that nail through Keiichi's hand -- I don't care how low your animation budget is or how transparent your plot machinations are, torture is still torture -- but now it's kind of like...the moment has passed. That WAS the absolute height of tension. Keiichi survived that, AND the stabbing, and AND the discovery of two Shion/Mion bodies; and now Mion/Shion turns up in the hospital?! Nuh-uh, sorry, it's going too far; it's too ridiculous to be frightening.
But: ahhhhaaaahaha. haaa. THAT. WAS HIS HAND. *trails off gibbering*
You know what, I do feel a little bit like ranting hysterically. ^^; DESPITE EVERYTHING. The second arc did it for me where the first arc did not -- something about the contrast between *spoiler* and *spoiler*. Also, Keichii being reasonable and trusting his friends enough to tell them what's bothering him, rather than...that other thing he did.
worldserpent explains it better here. Super-special spoiler warning: this is a series Charmian refused to spoil, and she is more open-minded about spoilers than anyone I know. So if, you know, the summary intrigues you and you're thinking about maybe watching the show, don't check below the cut. (Though I guess can't spoil anything major, since I've only seen the first eight episodes.)
Spirited Away By Ogres
This arc...really didn't convince me. ^^; Excerpts from MSN:
Subdee says:
what i wonder though
Subdee says:
is why is the protagonist friends with these four girls if,
Subdee says:
the first time someone from out of town, who he DOESN'T EVEN KNOW,
Subdee says:
tells him to be careful around them, he believes him!
Subdee says:
some friendship
/_\ says:
ahahahahaha
/_\ says:
well
Subdee says:
this random detective also shows up and makes him a "mole" for town gossip, which is kind of like o_O so you're deputizing random high school students then?
/_\ says:
if one of my friends occasionally walked around with a big freakin' axe looking scary
/_\ says:
i'd be wary, too
Subdee says:
XD
Subdee says:
but he said they'd need an axe!
Subdee says:
they were trying to dig out the body (of the KFC Colonel) from a pile of trash
Subdee says:
well, with this kind of horror, the conversations can be completely mundane
Subdee says:
and the horror comes from the music, and the protagonist's disturbed expression
Subdee says:
so i wonder why he's so easily disturbed
/_\ says:
ooohhh
/_\ says:
maybe he's the killer :3
Subdee says:
XDXDXD
Subdee says:
that would be funny
Subdee says:
ahhhh, i don't know
Subdee says:
half the power comes from the willingness of the protagonist to believe horrible things about his small-town friends with almost no/purely circumstantial evidence
Subdee says:
but maybe he just has a better sixth sense for these things than i do
So in other words I just wasn't convinced by the actual events of this arc that the horror atmosphere was at all justified. In fact I think "it was all in his head" explains more than it doesn't. On the other hand, you do kind of have to admire the protagonist (and the writers/director/voice actors) for being able to take a completely innocuous statement like "Who was that man you were eating with yesterday, Kei-chan?" and turn it into the most terrifying thing ever. In fact (and in a really neat trick, if Kei-chan's sentiments do turn out to have been unfounded paranoia), the contrast between the banality of what's being said, and what Keiichi (and the viewer) understands it to mean, only makes it more terrifying. Because...his friends are acting as if everything is completely normal, right? EVEN THOUGH THEY'RE REALLY ALL OUT TO KILL HIM.
(Man, I really hope you guys took my warning about spoilers seriously. Because the thing is...the tricks the show uses to create tension are fairly transparent, once you think to look for them. ^^; A big part of why it works is that the AUDIENCE goes in expecting one of the girls to be a murderer as well. In mystery terms you're looking for the killer, and in horror terms it's easy to believe that the inhabitants of a small, superstitious mountain town might be raving lunatics.)
I was pretty tired of Keiichi's "caution" by the end -- especially when he started keeping secrets from his friends and only confessing what he was thinking to Oishi (the detective) and carrying a baseball bat around with him for "protection". Actually, before that, when he hadn't started avoiding his friends yet and was just lying to them, I actually cheered when he said he "didn't feel up to" the club meeting. It was like, good for you! No more of this "oh, nothing's wrong really" fake-smile attitude while passive-aggressively continuing-to-spend-time-with-the-people-you-believe-may-be-trying-to-kill-you. XD; I am normally all for characters who can act normal in such circumstances, but combined with the moe character designs it was really just rubbing me the wrong way -- like he had to hide what he was really thinking from the girls because they are strange alien creatures (also possibly deranged killers) who it is no use explaining things to.
But even after he stops lying to their faces, he STILL doesn't tell them what the problem is! Look, buddy, I know it can be hard to tell your best friends that you think they're crazy murderers, but the silence isn't exactly helping you out here.
There's a point in the fourth (final) episode where Keichii goes home and closes all the windows and locks all the doors! Then the telephone rings. XD I thought: Someone has been reading from the horror-movie playbook.
The major question of this arc is: DID HE BEAT THEM TO DEATH WITH A BAT BECAUSE OF THE DRUGS? Or did he do it before they gave him the drugs? ...If the proof is in the syringe, does that mean that they never got to administer the drugs to him? So it was a pre-emptive beating? The other question is, if it wasn't narcotics, what made him claw out his own throat. (I hope Oishi, listening on the other end of the phone line as a by-this-point-completely-unstrung-Keiichi dies choking on his own blood, suffers horrible guilt-driven nightmares as penance for irresponsibly dragging an uninvolved student into a murder investigation.)
"If you are reading this, I'm probably already dead. Whoever sees this, please discover the truth." --That TOTALLY sounds like a line from a visual-novel-type computer game, doesn't it?
*****
Cotton Drifting
This arc is such a relief this arc is after the last one. -_-; Instead of doubting everyone and keeping everything to himself and spiraling further and further into paranoid delusion, Keiichi talks to his friends (even if only in metaphors) and keeps his head. Also, he doesn't fully trust Shion, who is seriously the right person to not trust in this situation. (So the moral of the last arc was, don't trust what you know, and the moral of this one is, believe your friends before you believe someone you've just met? ...I'm kind of surprised that I'm coming down so hard on the side of "what you know" here -- even including, don't seek forbidden knowledge. Maybe I just really dislike baseless hysteria. -_-;)
Annnnyway, you never really got a sense of why the four on them were friends in the last arc, and in this one, you do. Also, you know what? Keichi's friends are all really awesome. XD; And not at all in a "moe" way, but because they're intelligent, considerate, and strong-minded. The art (and in Rena's case, the airhead act -- though note, she isn't "pretending" when she does this, any more than Mion is "pretending" to be tough) really is deceptive.
Notes from as I was watching (note these will not be coherent if you haven't seen the episodes (and maybe not even then)):
Waiiiit! If Mion works at the restaurant where Keichi discussed the facts of the case with Oishi, that would totally explain how she knew where he'd had lunch that day. (Never mind that this is, like, an alternate universe.) As for knowing about the time when he was in the car, Rena could have easily seen that if she'd glanced out a window at the school parking lot. So there goes one reason Keichi had for suspecting Mion and Rena, blown away in a moment. I really do think it was all in his head.
...Oh, so it isn't Mion who works at the restaurant, but her twin sister. Nevermind then. (Wait a minute, a TWIN SISTER?! Is he really going to fall for that?! ...Ah, no. he isn't. ^^; Okay, no more premature comments from me. XD; Mion's split personality is cute until you realize...holy shit, she has a split personality! o_O;)
And here we see Horror Exhibit C, villagers who use their scary hive mind and identical blank stares to drive off intruders.
LOL, I thought the "jeolousy" of the title was going to be Mion being jealous of Rena for the doll, but instead it's Mion being jealous of Shion. Also: there really is a twin sister ahahaha.
Are we gonna get the full exposition of the curse every time?! It does help you to remember the facts though. (Construction worker, then tourists, then priest, then housewife.) Also: Aha, the first time at the festival he wins a prize for Rena, and the second time he doesn't.
When Shion says "there's something I specifically want you to see" it reminds me of Oishi's "I specifically picked you out of all the people in Hinimigawa." I guess the protagonist is just "special" (lucky him...?) Another thing: the photographer has to be the lookout so that Keiichi can yet again be surrounded by women XD.
Inside the temple: what the hell, that nurse's assistant is MORBID. Are you going to take all this sitting down, Keiichi? She just accused the whole town of ritual cannibalism! ...on the other hand, the shed *is* full of torture implements. (Man. but Shion is *REALLY* evil. I don't want to believe anything she says!)
"Make sure you keep this a secret, Maebara-san." ....Great. More secrets. -_-;
Shion hears things too! Sorry, I'm just really fixated on "people who aren't from Hinamizawa are hallucinating!" as an explanation for all the weird stuff that's going on. (Though...that wouldn't explain how events are replaying. Maybe Oyashirou-sama is giving Kei-chan a second chance? Or multiple second chances? He's already special, it wouldn't surprise me if he also got special treatment from the local god.)
No wonder none of the townspeople talk about it, talking about the murders just makes you crazy and then you end up dead afterward -_-;.
Oishi: Your friend is a yakuza princess.
Maebara: Oh.
...Oh? That's it?! Not even a "Wow, I knew Mion was scary, but I didn't know she was that scary"? What the hell. XD It is kind of cool, though, that knowing his best friend stands to inherit the underworld of the entire surrounding area doesn't change his opinion of her in the slightest.
Okaaaay, that wasn't even a subtle change, but Mion's face suddenly distorted into something totally unrecognizeable! Either he's hallucinating or there's something very, very wrong with Mion. (Or Shion.) "Maybe there's a side to Mion I don't know. That was the first time I thought that." --What, you mean it wasn't when you thought she was inventing a twin sister? Or when you first heard that she's a yakuza princess? No?
How's this for head-warping: Rena explains that the soy sauce bottle on the table was empty and so was the extra kept under the sink! The music swells ominously, and I, remembering the an earlier discussion about ogres and "delicious" sacrifices, think: oh my god, she's going to explain that the soy sauce was for taste.
(...)
The actual explanation: "So I think Rika-chan went over to the neighbors to borrow some soy sauce," Rena blithely continues. Ahahaha. Ahaha. Ha. Of course, to borrow from the neighbor! That's the rational conclusion to make in this situation. (You see how this show has gotten to me.)
There's a much greater sense this time around of the policeman humoring the middle school student. ^^; I was kind of "..." at Keiichi's sudden honorary promotion in the last arc. (And look where it got him!)
I'm...not really following this deal with the village chief either. So because he was gone most of the day the day Shion supposedly told him about the shrine, she couldn't have told him, so she was lying? But he didn't really go missing! All her lie (if it was a lie) accomplished, then, was to plant the idea that telling anyone about what happened at the shrine will make them disappear in Keiichi's mind -- and that didn't turn out to be true, right? So in other words, she lied to keep him quiet. ...Which would mean, omg, that his biggest blunder was telling her (Shion) that he'd told someone else (Rika) about what happened at the shrine. Because Shion wants to keep it quiet. And now Rika's disappeared. Okaaaaay, I do get why this could be important.
Ahem. That's not Mion, THAT'S SHION. The main difference between the two of them is that Mion is a horrible actress. (...omg. That means that, far from SHION being the one who disappeared after the festival, it was actually MION!! ...and she wasn't around in the episodes after that -- Rena was giving her some time to cool off. O_O O_O O_O Mionnnnnn! PLEASE DON'T BE DEAD. ...Man, Shion is LUCKY they didn't ask to see her tatoo. Siiiigh. You really don't want to be going off with her AGAIN, Kei-chan.)
Man, this case just goes on and on. ^^; I was in hysterics when Mion aka Shion was going to drive that nail through Keiichi's hand -- I don't care how low your animation budget is or how transparent your plot machinations are, torture is still torture -- but now it's kind of like...the moment has passed. That WAS the absolute height of tension. Keiichi survived that, AND the stabbing, and AND the discovery of two Shion/Mion bodies; and now Mion/Shion turns up in the hospital?! Nuh-uh, sorry, it's going too far; it's too ridiculous to be frightening.
But: ahhhhaaaahaha. haaa. THAT. WAS HIS HAND. *trails off gibbering*
You know what, I do feel a little bit like ranting hysterically. ^^; DESPITE EVERYTHING. The second arc did it for me where the first arc did not -- something about the contrast between *spoiler* and *spoiler*. Also, Keichii being reasonable and trusting his friends enough to tell them what's bothering him, rather than...that other thing he did.