Higurashi Episode 9 Discussion / Poll

[kj1980]

Welcome to the discussion thread for Higurashi no Naku Koroni, Episode 9.

Thread Guidelines

• No telling or asking for RAWs.
• Try to keep spoilers from the Game or Manga out of the anime thread. If you need to in reply to someone with a reference to the Game / Manga, either PM them or use Spoiler tags (see example below).
• Discuss your expectations of the episode if not aired.
• Be polite to your fellow forum members.
• Try to keep the discussion on topic and future episode spoilers out of the thread whenever possible.

Spoiler Tag Usage

Using Spoiler Tags is easy. Using this...

[spoiler=title]Don't forget to use the spoiler title[/spoiler]

....will get you this...

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Don't forget to use the spoiler title

ADDITIONAL RULES FOR Higurashi no Naku Koroni

• Make sure you read the English wikipedia article for Higurashi no Naku Koroni before you ask questions!!!
  
• Feel free to share your theories and speculations. In fact, I encourage you to do so as this is what makes this series interesting.
  
• I am designating Sushi-Y and Freakman to lead the discussion in the correct path without spoilers as they have played the game in advance. I put confidence in them that they will recognize a member has spilled the beans too far if any other members has begun to play the game.
  
• SPOILERS FAR ADVANCED THAN THE CURRENT AIRED ANIME EPISODE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED. THIS INCLUDES THOSE IN SPOILER TAGS!!!. People tend to peek at spoiler tags; especially when they do not know such tag is meant for the episode, only to find it spilling the beans too far advanced in the game storyline.

[kj1980]

Looking at the caps from 2chan, it seems the Kameda-kun scene with Kei was taken out. I agree with the anime staff's decision to shorten that section as it was rather insignificant. Also, it seems that Hoshi-san had caught a cold so Kei's voice sounded a bit nasal in this episode. Hm, I have to hear this for myself tomorrow.

And as I said previously, this episode brings the whole "director/manager" debacle into the spotlight - people will finally understand why I preferred to use the term "manager" instead of "director" for translating the Japanese word "kantoku" in Ep. 4.

[Freakman]

Indeed, they took out that baseball Keiichi scene, which although funny, wasn't exactly necessary. Too bad they didn't insist a bit more on Irie's fetish though ^.^
Otherwise, quite a lot of information about Satoko and Satoshi as expected.
As you said, Keiichi's voice sounded a bit strange at times.
And just like the ladder scene, Rena's voice didn't exactly match her face in the Oyashiro-sama scene : the voice is too soft and the face too deformed. Somewhat of a shame.

By the way, I forgot to mention : there was an overload of "Miii"'s from Rika this episode

[Sushi-Y]

Unlike Onikakushi and Watanagashi-hen, Tatarigoroshi-hen's focus isn't on the Watanagashi festival, that's why this chapter might appear to be proceeding more "slowly" to some people.

The episode itself was nice, although it felt like they were pushing the "fast-forward" button on the sound novel and only focused on 4 important scenes: Keiichi's cooking incident, the baseball competition (more significantly, the talk between Keiichi and Irie), Shion's anger, and the talk between Keiichi, Rena, and Mion about Satoshi.

The important clues from this episode are much more subtle, so it'll take more effort to notice them. But do pay attention to our main characters, and you should find yourself learning a little bit more about them in this episode.

Now then, some highlights:

Spoiler for highlights:

I want to make one thing clear first: unlike the "shocking death preview scenes" shown at the beginning of the other two chapters, this scene happened in real time. That is, this scene (where two residents discovered a dead body inside a garbage bag) actually did occur at the beginning of Tatarigoroshi-hen.

But if you ask me, I think they should've left this scene out altogether. In Minagoroshi-hen (7th chapter), we learn that this death is the TRIGGER to something. But if the anime's not going to do Minagoroshi-hen, then this scene is all but pointless.


Important: Keiichi can't cook!

... No, I'm just kidding, there's nothing important about that, other than the fact he's a moron for almost burning down the house.


"If Satoko and I haven't showed up, the fire truck would've been going bo- bo- and u- u- by now."
One of the most memorable lines for me. I'm glad they kept it.


(>ヮ<)


Who wouldn't want a little sister like Satoko?


The important thing here, I guess, is to note that Satoko is really far more mature than she appears to be. According to Satoko, Satoshi ran away one day and never came back.

Like Satoko said, Satoshi was also someone who couldn't take care of himself. Since Keiichi is the same, Satoko must've saw her ni-ni- in Keiichi too.


Rika relying on Keiichi to play the ni-ni- role was quite a big thing too. I don't think they included the line where Rika relied on Keiichi "since I can't become ni-ni- for Satoko".

Then again, did they skip the scene where Keiichi helped Satoko with grocery shopping too? That scene really gave off a feel that Keiichi really wants to become Satoko's ni-ni- though.


Keiichi's misunderstanding power at full-blast. It takes a man like Keiichi to misunderstand a competition as a fight. The golf club thing was famous.

In the original game, Keiichi's group was supposed to be losing the game, with Mion already wounded when Keiichi arrived. But since the Keiichi x Kameda thing is gone, there's no need for that anymore. Aww(?)

It also takes a man like Keiichi to swing the bat 2 seconds after the ball has already been caught by the catcher.

(Sorry Kameda-kun, it looks like your dessert fetish will just have to stay within the game)

(but as a result, it made Satoko look like she really IS good at sports, so I guess it's all good)


Iri's appearance. Irie's the doctor at the local clinic (you might remember him from Onikakushi-hen, he was the one who gave Keiichi the shot), and also the kantoku (manager/supervisor) for the Hinamizawa baseball team. That's why all the kids call him "Kantoku".
kj1980 thinks kantoku should be translated as "manager", and that's fine (although Shion is already the manager though ^^; ). But "supervisor" works too, I think.

"Kantoku, you sound like you're really into Satoko"
"Yes~ I am. I love her. I'm thinking of proposing to her when she becomes older."

Not off to a very good start, Iri. You already look like a pedophile to the anime-watchers. (well, more like maidophile )

On top of that, he wants to adopt Satoko?
Seriously though, we can tell from this scene that Iri really cares about Satoko.

"I wish for that child to be always living with laughter"
"...I'm thinking the same as well"

The anime missed one important promise Keiichi made with Irie at this point, and that is to "never make Satoko cry".


"I'm just speaking hypothetically, but what will you do if you were able to adopt Satoko?"

"Hmm, well... "First of all, I'll make her call me Goshujinsama, and re-educate her into my servant maid!""
Now, even though Shion said it for Iri, make no mistake, Iri is a maid freak. We're talking about a man who wants to create his own Maid Kingdom, after all.

(The above are all comedy talk within the story, don't take them seriously ^^; )

Iri, you're not denying it.


More about Shion and her position as the team manager will be explained in the TIPs section, I think.


Shion getting mad when Keiichi said Satoshi "transferred" out.

Actually, this is quite an important scene. Although it's probably a little hard to put the pieces together right now.


Keiichi confronting Rena and Mion about Satoshi.

Since the number of screenshots in this post is getting a little ridiculous, I'll pass on the screenshots for this scene. But the most imporatant thing to note about this scene is:
1) Satoshi, who has been saving up money for something, suddenly disappeared one day. On the same day, his bank account was also emptied out. Later, there was a report of someone looking like Satoshi spotted at the Nagoya train station. That's why many people say that Satoshi probably ran away from home.
2) Rena knows something about Oyashirosama's tatari (curse) and Satoshi's experience before he disappeared. Also, whenever the topic of Satoshi or Oyashirosama is mentioned, Rena becomes... overly serious and emotional.
4) Satoshi's (and Satoko's) parents were dam supporters, that's why people say they were punished by Oyashirosama when they died from the falling accident on the day of Watanagashi.
3) Rena believes herself to be an "experienced person" when it comes to Oyashisama's tatari (she has experienced it herself), and she becomes very angry when anyone trys to make fun of her about that. "Rena is normally quite playful, but she gets really scary when she's angry."
5) Mion remained very calm and understanding throughout this whole scene.

====================
Next episode, it looks like it run up to the point where Keiichi "makes the decision".

It's about to get (つД`)

[USCPharmacist]

fugly art so I gave it an 8 this time, but the story was interesting.

It seems that the Obsidian lor-- I meant the director/manager shows up. I wonder if he carries that "crazy" needle around him ehhehe.

Also, Shion...ahhh how I missed her...don't turn psycho and survive this time will you? Although I have a feeling that a lot of people are gonna die this time around, and the fact she became angry when K1 mention Satoshi did not bode well for her...

And of course, batman Rena is gone and my favorite Pyscho Rena is back. Go Billhook girl, show the infidels what real pain is like.

Finally, I am surprise that Mion slapped Rena, and Rena did not look too happy about that....I wonder if they will treat us a scene from the "Daybreak" Demo.....lol

[Keitarou]

They shortened every single one of the events drastically and left out quite some stuff (again), where's my curry addicted Ciel-senpai~ :(

Besides I'm somewhat annoyed with the animation hick-ups, like previously mentioned, the Rena scene was somewhat awful to watch due to that. :(

Anyway, still worth an 8 for everything else.

[Newprimus]

Looks like Mion might be the sane, reliable one like Rena was last arc, but that remains to be seen obviously.

I concur. The art does seem to have suffered. I hope it's only a temporary thing.

[Rasuberi]

沙都子お持ち帰り～

I enjoyed this episode... although the animation lacked a little in places, I feel like the animators have done a pretty good job with not letting quality drop too low. Either way, for me Higurashi isn't so much about the animation anyways! It's all about the story and mystery~

Seeing Shion get angry makes me even more impatient for Meakashi-hen.

[MarmoO]

I think it is safe to assume now that twin we have seen during ladder scene in 7th episode was indeed Shion. Scene with Rena was almost as grotesque as Mion in ladder scene, I hope they will change it in dvd release. And what I'm now most curious about is if demon/mental ilness/virus/whatever what is in deal here may also change it's victim's memory.

[kj1980]

Either that, or I'm beginning to sense that the production staff intentionally does those scenes to provide clues of when a person is in oyashiro-mode.

[Cyz]

that murder scene is really really disturbing.

[蜩の泣]

rena's tone in oyashiro-mode was just wired(way 2 normal lol).same thing happened in episode 7 when Mion turning mad. i dunno if staff did these on purpose or something ,but for me it's like some kind of quality drop

[LordAshram]

I'm beginning to think the animation is too extreme for the voices in said two scenes, because Keiichi is overexaggerating/taking things the wrong way/hallucinating with their actions but not their voice.... Meaning maybe Rena and Mion were actually psychotic in the first arc.

[Circular Logic]

Originally Posted by kj1980

Either that, or I'm beginning to sense that the production staff intentionally does those scenes to provide clues of when a person is in oyashiro-mode.

If they are, they do it very inconsistently.

Angry Shion still doesn't reduce the factor...

And psychotic Rena is always a good thing Pity I don't have enough Japanese to understand the details of their conversations...I just get what they're talking about

[Sir Alex]

*reads deleted post note*
If you want to know when an episode will be subbed and released - presumably by Wind, since the other groups working on the show are several episodes behind as of yet - come to #windfs on irc.rizon.net (ninja edit - .net not .com. Or does .com work? I don't know.) and ask there. We don't object as long as you're polite. This forum isn't really the place for it, though.

As for this episode - well, I'm glad that

Spoiler for minor spoilers, characters who appear and thoughts on them:

Shion is back as a full fledged character; I was somewhat worried that she'd go back into the shadows after Watanagashi-hen finished. I'm still not really getting the Satoko love, though. Sure, she had more lines in one minute of this episode than she did in all of Watanagashi-hen, but she's only graduated from "annoying brat" to "annoying brat with predictable soft spot" - still rather stereotypical IMO. Pretty much everyone else stayed the same. Rena remains the best character of the cast by far.
That doctor, though... I'm SURE he couldn't have said what I think he said about Satoko. There are no H-scenes in Higurashi, right? RIGHT? Right.

[I<3killerloli's]

^ I don't understand your link, it leads me to either an error page or a weird nonrelated page.

[SpaceDrake]

Er, what's not to understand about the link? It's an IRC server, not a normal webpage server. Do you understand how to use IRC?

[I<3killerloli's]

I'll be honest, no. I'm not very computer literate. What does IRC mean?

[SpaceDrake]

Internet Relay Chat. A very low-bandwidth, real-time chat type that can support hundreds of people in a single room.

A good IRC client to start with is mIRC. Rizon should already be in the drag-down server menu, so just get on that and type /join #windfs once you're connected.

[Boukenxha]

Spoiler for ep 9 thoughts and speculative connections to Watanagashi-hen:

I can't help but think that the girls are seeing a strong Satoshi resemblance in Keiichi. Satoshi probably enjoyed hanging around with the girls in club activities as the only boy, like Keiichi is doing now. We also have Keiichi being looked upon as a ni-ni replacement for Satoko in Tatarigoroshi and Keiichi acting similar to Satoshi in Onikakushi. I think all this references could be a hint that Keiichi has a personality close to Satoshi's. Although I don't doubt that village people are generally more friendly and Keiichi is a nice sociable boy, maybe it's this sense of familiarity in him which allows him to be accepted so quickly by the group?

Anyway, my point is... this really feels like a lead to why onee in ep 8 said that everything started because Keiichi did not give the doll to Mion. As I think onee is Shion, why would Shion want to kill Keiichi for a seemingly trival thing like this which involved Mion and not her? So Shion had a close relationship with Satoshi, was there an identical scarring incident between the two? The thing that Satoshi was working part-time and saving up for... a doll maybe (think missing doll scene in ep 8)? Don't forget that Shion probably killed Satoshi too. That scene in ep 9, perhaps we can also take it one way to say that she was pissed because everyone prefer to say Satoshi got transferred. It's like a mockery of her "justice" and a denial of her will to execute a love one in the name of her twisted "justice". And recalling the fact that Mion likes Keiichi and Shion at least have some feelings for him, how much of it was due to the Satoshi resemblances? Was there some sort of a love triangle between Satoshi and the twins back then? Ah I'm reminded of the OP sequence once again.