[Captain Bluebeard]

Originally Posted by haguruma

And he actually did do that (or let it be done) again and again by now. This is one of the reasons why I can't take Higurashi seriously anymore.

Spoiler for Higurashi beyond Meakashi:

Due to the existence of such arcs like Onisarashi, Yoigoshi or the totally weird Kotohogushi he contradicted himself so many times on the internal mythology and science of his own series that it's just getting stupid.
After the series ended you could basically say that it was a simple genetic mutation in Hinamizawa that developed along the way which made the people more prone to violent outbursts...a mutation of a gland (much like he did in a certain other series).
But then he suddenly changed things around, one time it was related to stress, other times there were still unknown factors and finally we got the story around Hanyû's arrival in Hinamizawa over ONE THOUSAND YEARS AGO (proof that Ryûkishi didn't care being historically incorrect far before he involved Nazi gold being shipped through a war-infested ocean) and the disease was already around and somehow curable due to her alien blood.

Even though it is one of the key factors of Higurashi he never properly explained it...if anything he made it worse by writing in circles around it.

I'd prefer Umineko's way of an open solution to this retcon marathon any day.

I don't think Onisarashi and Yoigoshi and all those shit were written by Ryukishi. Then again, I'm not really sure about that, I'll have to look it up. But I agree here, why do they insist releasing all sorts of sub-series they can pull out of their ass when Higurashi was just fine as it was? You've got all those sappy DS arcs, you've got the manga arcs, you've got a stupid mahjog game out of the blue, you've got an OVA, and don't get me started on Kira!