[theacefrehley]

Originally Posted by Khym Chanur

Hey, everyone, this is my first post to the Higurashi board on the AnimeSuki forums; I'd like to thank the translators for all their hard work. This post contains a number of questions and guesses/theories, so please bear with me. I'm going to use the spoiler tags to save space, since this is kind of long

Spoiler for Why Rika's parents were killed:

First, the recently translated The Mistrust of the Queen's Mother (Piece #11) has given me a theory as to why Mika's parents became "victims of the curse". Takano didn't want Mika to be removed from the research project due to her mother's objections, so the mother had to be gotten rid of. Once this was decided, since they were already getting rid of her, they used her as test subject, since , if the queen theory was correct, she was the queen carrier before Rika; they could compare and contrast the results from Rika versus her mother to either disprove the queen theory or gain more insight into it.

At the same time that Rika's mother was taken (and her suicide note forged) her father was killed in order to continue the previous pattern of one person showing up dead and the other disappearing on the night of the Watanagashi. In the first Watanagashi death/disappearance, the Yamainu (Takano's organization) had nothing to do with the death of the construction site manager, and while it was responsible for the disappearance of one of the manager's murderers, the fact that the incident took place on Watanagashi was pure chance (since H170 hadn't been developed yet, the manager's Syndrome couldn't be artificially induced). That Satoko's parents died/disappeared on Watanagashi, and the fact that one corpse was found and the other not found, was also a coincidence. But now that a pattern had been established by coincidence, Takano wanted to keep that pattern up (though I'm not sure as her motive for doing so).

Hmmmm, but wait. According to the Minagoroshi prologue, if something happens in all of the different worlds, then it's important, and possibly caused by someone taking steps to make sure it happens. But I don't see how it could be the dam site manager's death and mutilation to be arranged unless Takano already had a means of artificially inducing the Syndrome, but H170 wasn't developed until after the vivisection of the missing murderer of the dam site manager. Hmmmmm.

Spoiler for The syringe Mion and Rena used on Keiichi:

Now, my thoughts on the syringe that Mion used on Keiichi at the end of episode 4 (Onikakushi-hen, Spirited Away by Ogres arc). One possibility is that there was no syringe, that the Syndrome had progressed to a point where the he was so delusional that he thought that something innocuous (like the marker used in the first penalty game) was actually a syringe. After killing Mion and Rena, Keiichi added to the secret note the bit about the "curse" being cause by a drug, attached the note and not-syringe to the back of the clock, then had further delusions which caused him to rip out the part of the note that mentioned the drug and remove the not-syringe before putting the clock back on the wall. But this theory fails because:

1) It would then be a big coincidence that Rika tried to use a syringe on Shion (or Shion had delusions of a syringe).
2) What kind of delusions could Keiichi have that would make him tear out the part of the note that mentions drugs and remove the not-syringe from the back of the clock?
3) It's a really boring theory.

So then, I think that there really was a syringe that Mion had. If this is the case, the questions are:

1) Who gave Mion and Rena the syringe and told them to use it on Keiichi?
2) Why did this person have those two do it, as opposed to someone else?
3) What were the contents of the syringe?
4) What were Mion and Rena told in order to get them to try to inject Keiichi?

For #1, one possibility is Rika, since she tried to use a syringe on Shion in several of the other arcs. If so, the answer to #2 would be that Rika However, there are no indications that Rika shared her knowledge about what was happening at this point in her repetitions/reboots. Also, if it was Rika, then why did those three men (Yamainu?) knock out Keiichi and drop him off at his house?

Another possibility is Irie, but this also presents some problems:

A) If the three men knocked out Keiichi on Irie's orders, then he would have had them do the injection. On the other hand, if Takano ordered them to do so, what was her motive?
B) Mion and Rena said that they had contacted Irie (the baseball coach/manager) and that he'd be coming over. But if he met up with them in person in order to give them the syringe, why couldn't he come over to Keiichi's house with them?

The last possibility that I can think of is that Takano gave the syringe to the girls. She had the three men knock out Keiichi and dump him at his house, then gave the girls the syringe and told them where he was.

Now, for question #3 (the contents of the syringe), if the syringe was given to the girls by either Rika or Irie, the contents would be something to help Keiichi, either a sedative/tranquilizer or C103. If it was given to them by Takano, then there's a variety of possibilities for the contents, but Takano must have known that there was a good chance that Keiichi could prevent the girls from injecting him, so why not leave the business of the injection to the three men? The answer is that it didn't matter if he was injected or not, the point was to have the girls come at him with a syringe so as to drive Keiichi up from L3 or L4 to L5. And if the point of giving the girls the syringe was to give Keiichi a certain psychological stimulus, then Takano couldn't risk the girls succeeding in injecting him with the sedative/H170/whatever, so the contents of the syringe had to be totally inactive. In other-words, ordinary water.

For question #4, if the syringe were given to Mion and Rena by Rika or Irie, they would have been told that Keiichi had to be injected for his own good, that his strange behavior was a result of an illness and that the injection would help. In this case, the two of them would most likely have told Keiichi that they were doing this for his own good, but what he heard was that they were doing it for a penalty game. I suppose it's possible that Keiichi's Syndrome had progressed so far that he was hearing things entirely different than from what people were actually saying to him, but if that was the case, why would he hallucinate that they were talking about a penalty game? If Takano gave them the syringe, she could have also used a "it's for his own good" line, but that suffers from the same problems noted above. But, unlike Rika or Irie, she had the option of telling the girls that the syringe only had water in it, and that they could use it for a practical joke. However, the theory that Takano told them the syringe contained water still has the problem that she either had to know that Mion and Rena were looking for a penalty game to play on Keiichi, or she had to have a reason for directly suggesting to the girls that they play the practical joke on Keiichi.

Spoiler for How much of the first arc were Keiichi's delusions and hallucinations:

I've been wondering about how much of the first arc was stuff that actually happened and Keiichi perceived correctly, how much actually happened but he perceived incorrectly due to paranoia/delusion, and how much (if any) he outright hallucinated. Specifically, I'm thinking about: 1) Mion and Rena knowing things about Keiichi that they shouldn't be able to know, 2) Mion's rant about how she should have killed Ooishi, 3) Rena talking to Keiichi after school about how she won't let him be demoned away, something that she should have done for Satoshi, and 4) Keiichi finding a sewing needle in the food that Rena gave him.

For #5, I think that him finding a needle in the food was a hallucination. Rena might have put something pointy but harmless into one of the... whatevers, but observing something pointy-yet-harmless but seeing a sewing needle goes beyond misinterpreting what your sense tell you due to paranoia, and can only be explained by hallucination. As further evidence of hallucination, he couldn't find the needle when Ooishi asked him for it; if it were a mere paranoid misinterpretation, then he would have found whatever he had mistaken for a needle and mistaken it for a needle again due to misinterpreting it in the same way.

For #2, Mion's rant about how she should have killed Ooishi, I think was just a paranoid misinterpretation, made easier because Mion was talking to herself and so was easy to be misheard from a distance. She was ranting because Ooishi has been trying to pin the Watanagashi deaths/disappearances on her family, and because he keeps on asking asking Satoko about her parents death with a persistence Mion perceives as harassment.

For #1, Mion and Rena knowing things about Keiichi that they shouldn't be able to know, I think this happened exactly as Keiichi perceived it, with no paranoid misinterpretations or hallucinations. Rena knew that Keiichi had talked with Ooishi instead of having gone to the restroom, but someone else at the school could have told her that. Rena and Mion knew that he had had lunch at that restaurant, but Shion could have told him that he was there (assuming that Keiichi was too worked up to notice that someone looking exactly like Mion was there). Rena knew exactly what Keiichi was going to be eating for dinner when he refused to let her into his house, but she could have seen him buying the instant noodles when at the Sevens Mart.

For #3, Rena talking to Keiichi after school about how she won't let him be demoned away, I think it was mainly paranoid misinterpretations, at least with regards with her going into "cat-eye mode", where she speaks calmly speaks in a somewhat lower voice, and wears a neutral look on her face. I'm guessing that she was actually pleading/distraught/crying, and the insane laughter after she kissed him was actually her sobbing/weeping. I'm not sure if her carrying the hatchet was real or a hallucination.

I'll post more later, but I really have to get some sleep now.

On Tsumihoroboshi, it's already clear that there was no syringe or needle... It was a crayon in the first case

The reason of this specific hallucination?
Ooishi mentioned to Keiichi that Tomitake could have died from abuse of some drug (drug calls syringe, isn't it?)