[Klashikari]

Originally Posted by Khym Chanur

Even if the cops couldn't use their guns because of the gasoline fumes, why didn't any of them try to climb up onto the roof? They could quickly try to find something in the building to act as a shield, then have one of them go up on the roof with it so they can gang up two-on-one on Rena.

Ooishi was forced to pull back their forces, because the school could explode at ANY moment.

I get the impression that that was supposed to be the point (although that point might have been lost in the transition from game to anime, I can't remember). It was a miracle that Keiichi's words were able to get through to Rena. It was a miracle that Keiichi was able to remember what had happened in a previous time-loop. Witnessing those two back-to-back miracles yanked Rika out of her fatalism and gave her the hope that fueled her attempts at really forging a happy ending in the nex time loop.

not really : as we could see in tsumihoroboshi-hen, rena was not that frenzy. also she got enough time to realize what she was doing with her friends.
keiichi was under a rush of stress : his paranoia was fast and furious, rather being slow and reasoned like rena's paranoia.

the fact that Keiichi could stop rena was indeed a huge improvement and cheer rika up, since one of the 3 rules was defeated.

Hee! Yeah, I loved the contrast between surface fluffyness of the show and the horror underneath. "One guy with four cute girls, playing games and getting into arguments, la la la la-- HOLY SHIT!!"

i don't think the contrast comes from the "low budget" point, but the character design itself.
with some work, the animation could be smoother, the colours could be brighter etc.
not to mention that we could avoid thoses "ZOMFG, UBER DISTORSIONNED FACE, AMARITE?".
seriously, it is just like it was said on this forum, we could compare it with minagoroshi poem, especially this :

The third time, disgust is overwhelmed into painfulness.
But by the seventh time, this all becomes a farce comedy.

3 memorable scenes :
-Shion with the ladder (ep. 7 & 21)
-Shion using a whip against her onibaba (ep. 19)
-Rena smashing Mion's head with the reversed edge of her cleaver (ep. 26)

The 26 episodes of the anime covered the first 6 out of 8 games. They couldn't strecth out the last two games to cover 26 episodes unless they created several "filler" arcs/worlds/chapters, and given how awful normal filler episodes are, filler for a complex and strange series like Higurashi... *shudder* Gah, I don't even want to think about it.

trust us... the game is so full of stuff that the 2 last chapters would be able to cover 26... (minagoroshi prologue is itself enough to cover like 5 whole minutes...)