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I've been trying to hold off judgement for Gou and Sotsu until the end of the whole "mystery", but each episode adds to the feeling that Higurashi fairly lost its meaning and is now just a shitshow of "what happens if everything went wrong in Hinamizawa worse than it did before and now there's someone creepily smirking at everything that's going on to indicate how evil they have become".
It's been pretty complicated hard keeping up immersion and whatnot when you see Satoko stalking around places with red eyes and you're expected to take it seriously when it's a few times per episode. The Answers Arc of the original Higu still kept the atmosphere of the Questions Arc and added to the dramatic and tragic factor of the whole story rather than the ridiculousness of Satoko's sociopathic ordeal.
Revealing Satoko as the culprit so early on might have been a bad mood on the storytelling part of things, namely because - even with hinting - Miyo wasn't revealed until Minagoroshi-hen, so during the Answers Arc you still had an element of mystery and the feeling that the story wouldn't end just there. Whereas here, selling Satoko as the culprit - soon to be a full season ago - and taking so much time going over her motives and what happened before Nekodamashi-hen, when it can really just be summed up as "Satoko went and injected someone again!" just makes every episode feel like it's dragging the series on until we actually get back into the real action.
I do realise it's not supposed to be the same as the original Higurashi, but it just doesn't feel as well-paced and the whole "hinting to ties with Umineko and Ciconia" isn't helping the series much in my opinion.
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