Higurashi Kai Episode 24 Discussion / Poll [END]

[Rayneing]

In the visual novels, she looks the same age as Rika. Or at least in Umineko, I don't think you ever got to see what she looked like in Higurashi.

[The Real Nemo]

Originally Posted by Rayneing

In the visual novels, she looks the same age as Rika. Or at least in Umineko, I don't think you ever got to see what she looked like in Higurashi.

Eh, really? If that's the case then it makes her appearance at the end of the anime even more confusing...

[Eryops]

Originally Posted by The Real Nemo

She looks a lot older doesn't she? Or at least she did at the end of ep 24...

Bernkastel can change her form at will and simply chooses to appear older when she visits Miyoko. However this is the shape she takes by default.

[The Real Nemo]

Originally Posted by Eryops

Bernkastel can change her form at will and simply chooses to appear older when she visits Miyoko. However this is the shape she takes by default.

Hm, I hope she plays a role in the third series so things like this get explained better to everyone...

[Hareoic]

Originally Posted by Eryops

Bernkastel can change her form at will and simply chooses to appear older when she visits Miyoko. However this is the shape she takes by default.

...She dresses as a french maid? Irie's gonna have a field day with this...

[Sterling01]

She also has a cat tail

[tyciol]

I just finished this! Totally great! Although... to be honest, the ending confused me. The woman looked a lot like a certain someone? The little girl was definately T but that doesn't make sense, it's like ages reversed. Does she get special time travel powers or something when she's older and visits the past to save her parents from what sent her on the sad path? Now I've read the thread and understand who it is, which is kind of a spoiler... but I don't why everyone thinkgs this detracts from the final episode. Everyone thinks its confusing, but is it? Isn't it better to look at her as suspenseful? You can end the season thinking it is Rika, and then get it clarified with mystery in the 3rd. I sort of wish I didn't read the spoilerso n this thread to find that out

I mean, it's like in the original season with the Watanagashi arc... if you knew that Miyon was actually Shion disguised as her doing all the crimes, it wold have ruined it right? In this case, you think Bern is Rik, so what's the problem with thinking that for a while?

But then... in that case, wouldn't it cause some kind of paradox? Like... then the neverending June would never need to be since there's no tragedy. Very confusing and eerie.

To be honest I think I like the episodes leading up to the conclusion more than the actual conclusion, though I still really liked it. There were a lot of suspenseful scenes and great action. Kai definately had a much different overall feel compared to the first season, I like each in its own way. I guess something did have to change, eventually matters did need to elucidate, if they kept on going that way without progress it might become strange. Like, I never got sick of it and it's hard to imagine it, but if it went on 100 eps like that who knows, could turn into how many feel about Naruto filler even though I liked it.

There's going to be a third series? But everything was all tied up and happy... I mean, what is left to do in the third series, something different, or are they going to go back further and try to fix all the murders or something?

With Hanyuu and the deflection... I admit, I was more surprised than I should have been. After all, there was foreshadowing with the coin at the altar when Miyo first arrives in the village in the beginning of the arc.

Originally Posted by MarthX

Then at the very very end it announces the third season.

I didn't notice this, maybe the one I watched had that part cut off... I wouldn't expect them to announce that, did they announce S2 at the end of S1?

Originally Posted by Klashikari

And yes, there will be a special episode, N°25 next week.

Has this come out yet? This would have been in January... but it's not listed on Wikipedia for the series, sure it wasn't the movie? Maybe Ep 25 and series 3 aren't coming, maybe it's just a movie, where it'll be all abridged just like with Death Note

Originally Posted by Rias

Too bad the following were cut:
-Mion vs Okonogi.
-Hinamiza.warudo...well considering what has happened to the scene in Minagoroshi-hen, it not that suprising, I guess.
-Yukie vs Akasaka

All this kind of stuff really makes me want to play the game... the only thing is, with different endings it's confusing to find out what happens and how to decide 'canon' for the series, which'd make it easier if it were a straight book to read.

Originally Posted by Cytrus

Well, the only ending which would satisfy me entirely is one in which both Takano and Rika win. That would have to be choke-full of symbolism though.

A quickie question, since I avoided spoilers for this earlier. Was there anything specific behind "Rena's hat message" in the first arc? Satoko did seem as if she had understood something other than "I'm in danger".

Now that you mention it, yeah. I figured it would be answered later in the series, but I forgot about it and it wasn't, I would like to know if this is clarified too. The whole story about Rena and some other villagers escaping the slaughter sounds to me very like how they escaped to the mountains through the tunnels and stuff. Since there are a lot of correlations between the happenings in arcs, it makes me wonder if something similar happened, only with Rena playing a bigger role. I didn't even see her do anything in the final battle. The previous arc was much better axe-ness.

Originally Posted by Cytrus

Well, the only ending which would satisfy me entirely is one in which both Takano and Rika win. That would have to be choke-full of symbolism though.

That would be tough to put together, but possible. I think it would be about getting through to Takano and having her find a way to validate her grandfather's research, and attacking the real enemy, the politicians behind it all. They could get put away and she could really cure it, get the theory validated and go on to do good.

In a way, with the epilogue, they might both win from that though... she's set on a better path. She could still meet the grandfather through her father right?

Originally Posted by Klashikari

That said, the hat is a big thing to actually point that something is "wrong" with the disaster

Yeah, it did lead to Ooishi probing into it some, but usually when Ooishi reads into the hidden meanings about stuff (like the day-old corpse in barrel) he's usually right about it, so for him to offer a BS theory seems kind of strange, which makes me think there really was some kind of message?

Originally Posted by Davidj

Come to think of it, that was the very first Canada Day.

I never noticed that, but I looked it up on Wikipedia and you're right, that's the first date it was officially celebrated even if people were calling it that prior.

Originally Posted by angel.shade

I swear Rika says "ni-pah" more times in individual episodes of Kai than she did in the entire first series.

That seems a bit embellished. The thing about 'Kai is that unlike the first season, now that you're more familiar with Dark Rika, you can see how the whole NiiPaa thing is a charade she puts on to relax people. This is what gives so much power to her final NiiPaa in the final episode, because you realize that out of the whole series so far, it is the first genuine carefree NiiPaa you've actually seen her give. It means something wholly different, she's relaxed and you know this is genuinely her, she's a person sighing, not a kid with a catch phrase like a cartoon cat which is what it seems like when she's introduced as a character in the beginning of the series.

[Dreamiel]

Originally Posted by tyciol

All this kind of stuff really makes me want to play the game... the only thing is, with different endings it's confusing to find out what happens and how to decide 'canon' for the series, which'd make it easier if it were a straight book to read.

It is a straight book to read, you don't make any choices, you just click and read. Same ending all the time. The only interaction is for the TIPs and Minigames.

[mikikoko]

I think it is very very perfect. >w<)~

And I fall in love with Rika and Hanyu lol

[bratchaman]

Originally Posted by Eryops

Bernkastel can change her form at will and simply chooses to appear older when she visits Miyoko. However this is the shape she takes by default.

Are you serious? I didn't realize she could take on different forms. That's... awesome.

Originally Posted by mikikoko

I think it is very very perfect. >w<)~

And I fall in love with Rika and Hanyu lol

Hai nano desu!

[Eryops]

Originally Posted by bratchaman

Are you serious? I didn't realize she could take on different forms. That's... awesome.

That seems like the most likely explanation as to why she appear as an adult to Miyoko. Also one point in the Tea Party from Legend of the Golden Witch, Bernkastel uses the phrase "formerly when I had a human body". The fact that witches apparently lack human bodies makes it seem plausible that they can decide what form they take when they show up on Earth.

[Sterling01]

Bernkastel also has trouble remembering things about Rika, as it took her sometime to remember that Rika used "Ni-pah" and "Mii"

[Eryops]

Originally Posted by Sterling01

Bernkastel also has trouble remembering things about Rika, as it took her sometime to remember that Rika used "Ni-pah" and "Mii"

Wasn't she also trying to remember the "Fighto!" that she had told Keiichi in Watanagashi-hen and presumably Meakashi-hen?

Perhaps time doesn't flow linearly in the dimension that witches reside since, based on the witches' discussion, her match with Lambdadelta appears to have ended recently but Bernkastel's memories as Rika appear to be fairly remote and hard to recall. Unless of course the time that has passed was only short from the perspective of a witch and since they appear to be immortal it could still be a fairly large time span.

By the way, in Higurashi Daybreak Rika says 「これが100年の魔女の力よ」 when entering one of the hypermodes. Is she calling herself a hundred year-old witch?

[Sterling01]

Yes she is, though that's not really anything as Beato is a thousand years old.

Also the time in Beato's realm seems to flow at the same rate as the real world, as Battler comments IIRC that it took a long time for all the pieces to be set up

[Eryops]

Originally Posted by Sterling01

Yes she is, though that's not really anything as Beato is a thousand years old.

Bernkastel's age isn't mentioned in Umineko, correct? Without it doesn't seem like we can really tell how much time has passed since Higurashi.

Though I do find it interesting that Rika calls herself a witch at that point. It seems to imply that after a century Rika has already become Bernkastel, at least to an extent. The fact that she tells Rena that she isn't Rika when she visits her in the trash dump in Tsumihoboroshi-hen would also lend credence to such an idea. Bernkastel does mention of course that Rika and Frederica are different, but the scene from Tsumihoboroshi-hen suggests that she has already ceased to consider herself to be Rika by that point in time.

Originally Posted by Sterling01

Also the time in Beato's realm seems to flow at the same rate as the real world, as Battler comments IIRC that it took a long time for all the pieces to be set up

In that case it seems possible that the realm in which Bernkastel normally resides functions differently. Considering that Bernkastel is able to appear before Myioko when the latter is a child, it appears as if time does flow differently there (or that Bernkastel can time travel, though this seems less likely to me). Considering what we see in the 52nd piece of Matsuribayashi-hen, I'm guessing that, after her victory, Bernkastel spent a considerable amount of time playing around with the various worlds before growing bored of that and visiting Beatrice. That would explain why the memories from her time as Rika were hard to recollect.

[Hareoic]

Originally Posted by Eryops

Bernkastel's age isn't mentioned in Umineko, correct? Without it doesn't seem like we can really tell how much time has passed since Higurashi.

Officially, though, her physical age is of a woman in her twenties. Not sure about how old she really is though.

[Eryops]

Originally Posted by Hareoic

Officially, though, her physical age is of a woman in her twenties. Not sure about how old she really is though.

Did it say that somewhere in the visual novels? Because based on her appearance I'd say she takes a form that's pretty close to Rika's physical age.

[Sterling01]

Originally Posted by Eryops

Did it say that somewhere in the visual novels? Because based on her appearance I'd say she takes a form that's pretty close to Rika's physical age.

It doesn't say anything like that in Umineko

[Hareoic]

Originally Posted by Eryops

Did it say that somewhere in the visual novels? Because based on her appearance I'd say she takes a form that's pretty close to Rika's physical age.

No, it stated it in the art book for the second season.

[Eryops]

Originally Posted by Hareoic

No, it stated it in the art book for the second season.

Though that must be referring to Bernkastel's appearance during her visit to Miyoko rather than what she looks like by default. I think that the most plausible explanation is that she changed her appearance in order to be able to be taken more seriously by Miyoko than if she had looked like a child.