Higurashi Gou - Anime Episode Discussion Thread (OG/Kai spoilers OK)

[Marina2]

So..........If I understand it correctly.

1. Rika in Matsuribayashi world is still safe and waiting for Satoko at the restaurant.
2. Only Satoko got sent back to the past in the different world/timeline and has been in her own loop since then.
3. Rika that we have been following in Gou is not the Matsuribayashi-Rika but she is Rika that Satoko killed in alternate timeline that is similar to Matsuribayashi.


.......................

Look like we also need Ciconia knowledge on top of Umineko knowledge to fully understand what not-Featherrine said to Satoko.

Also, Satoko, you're dumb. You know what you did wrong in previous loop and you get to redo everything but end up making the same mistake.

I am honestly feel sorry for those 3 friends of Rika at St.Lucia that had to see that happened in front of their eyes. They only said few lines but that more than enough to tell that they're good friends to Rika.

[BWTraveller]

I don't feel too much sympathy for those girls. With the amount of time they've spent with her, and even the things they'd said, it's clear that they know Satoko is an important person to Rika. And yet, all Satoko has to do is hug Rika and they act all offended like she'd just sullied her somehow. They care about Rika perhaps, but that's Rika as a high-society lady that belongs within their group, and like last time those that do not fit in are vulgar, uncouth and unworthy to associate with them or with Rika. At least that's the impression I got. Sure, they didn't deserve to actually see the two die like that, but it doesn't change the fact that they had a rather bad attitude that contributed more than a bit to Satoko's pain by making it clear that those who fail to live up to their standards aren't wanted.

And honestly, for all Rika's trips, she's really not very perceptive. Her best friend is clearly in pain and she doesn't seem to have put forth that much effort in helping her, or in making it clear to those girls that they shouldn't be so harsh. Satoko was too quick to push away and view things in a bad light as Rika looking down on her, but Rika has been too focused on fitting in with this new crowd and not rocking the boat, even when this hurts those she holds most precious.

Anyway, I just hope that this, like the original, ends with the villain finding some chance at happiness. Frankly, I want to see the two of them realize their mistakes and patch things up; just my preference really, I love stories where friends become estranged and maybe even enemies but find some way to either restore their friendship or make something stronger from the broken pieces.

[Kakurin]

Originally Posted by BWTraveller

And honestly, for all Rika's trips, she's really not very perceptive.

Think both are failing to understand the true needs of the other. Satoko doesn't understand why Rika is so desperate to get out of Hinamizawa after all those cycles she had to live through. Meanwhile, Rika doesn't understand just how hard leaving Hinamizawa and living in an environment like St. Lucia is to Satoko and took the responsibility that comes with that promise far too lightly.

[Klashikari]

Honestly, I have hard time to sympathize with Satoko considering she got another chance to solve this situation. But her very first "solution" was to -sabotage- Rika's efforts. It is only after seeing Rika's stubborness that she gave in, yet it is another round of suffering. To make things worse, that only happened once and she immediately concluded it was worth killing herself with Rika. She didn't really make any effort or didn't make a decision on her own about her life instead of chasing after Rika and immediately went to a very odd and extreme direction.
To be frank, I expected Featherine was going to corrupt Satoko by showing countless loops where nothing good would go between them in the future outside of Hinamizawa which would push her to the edge. But seeing her failing at the exact same scenario makes her decision and actions even more disturbing.

Originally Posted by BWTraveller

I don't feel too much sympathy for those girls. With the amount of time they've spent with her, and even the things they'd said, it's clear that they know Satoko is an important person to Rika. And yet, all Satoko has to do is hug Rika and they act all offended like she'd just sullied her somehow. They care about Rika perhaps, but that's Rika as a high-society lady that belongs within their group, and like last time those that do not fit in are vulgar, uncouth and unworthy to associate with them or with Rika. At least that's the impression I got. Sure, they didn't deserve to actually see the two die like that, but it doesn't change the fact that they had a rather bad attitude that contributed more than a bit to Satoko's pain by making it clear that those who fail to live up to their standards aren't wanted.

I believe you are thinking way too deeply about these characters. They are pretty much shown as your usual fangirl groupies of setup similar to Marimite and that's about it. In other words, they idolize Rika but don't really know her personally and there isn't really any reason for them to think deeply about Satoko's behaviour, moreso that Satoko indeed looks out of place. And considering what happened in the first loop and how Rika reacted similarly in the second one, Satoko once again didn't really do anything about that.

And honestly, for all Rika's trips, she's really not very perceptive. Her best friend is clearly in pain and she doesn't seem to have put forth that much effort in helping her, or in making it clear to those girls that they shouldn't be so harsh. Satoko was too quick to push away and view things in a bad light as Rika looking down on her, but Rika has been too focused on fitting in with this new crowd and not rocking the boat, even when this hurts those she holds most precious.

The thing is that the series shows you Satoko's POV and very rarely show what's Rika's. Even then, we know from the first loop that Rika still trusts Satoko and corrected them at some point. But again, it isn't going nowhere when Satoko is the one who keeps being hostile instead of either 1) trying to make herself home in St Lucia 2) simply not going there to begin with.

[Kanon]

Rika is too much of a sweet talker for her own good
Everything is on Satoko this time around though. She let things play exactly the same as the first time, simply hoping that Rika would help her this time (she apparently tried and got rejected again). Honestly, it makes little sense. How could she not learn AT ALL from her mistakes? This is the same girl that two episodes ago was shouting "AAAAAAAAHHHH, I wish I said no to Rika at that moment!!! Take me back, take me back!"

[Jan-Poo]

Well there's a few things to note here.

The first is that in this loop Rika has no knowledge that she is repeating the post Takano crisis again. This is the first time we are seeing something like this happening. So far both Rika and Satoko (ostensibly) had at least knowledge that they were starting a new loop. So what exactly is different? It could be that for Rika to realize she's looping she needs to die as well, and somehow if that happens both Satoko and Rika start at the very same point. However if that's the case then this should happen already on the next loop, which means the next loop is where this new series started. Did Satoko learn how to manipulate all those factors already? That seems... unlikely.

Secondly. Now that Satoko has the power to loop while keeping all of her memories, she also has a virtually infinite amount of time to study. As a matter of facts preparing for the exams a second time shouldn't have been nearly as difficult for her as it was before. Give it a few times and she could learn everything she needs to learn and get perfect grades. But of course at this point it has just become a matter of principle for her. She consider Rika a traitor and she won't be satisfied until she bends her to her will. Moreover not-featherinne said that Satoko must pay the price in the form of "entertainment". I guess watching Satoko become a model St. Lucia student wouldn't suit her tastes.

BTW the opening has changed, and now that character is clearly visible. She still has no name, not even in the credits.

Originally Posted by Kanon

Rika is too much of a sweet talker for her own good
Everything is on Satoko this time around though. She let things play exactly the same as the first time, simply hoping that Rika would help her this time (she apparently tried and got rejected again). Honestly, it makes little sense. How could she not learn AT ALL from her mistakes? This is the same girl that two episodes ago was shouting "AAAAAAAAHHHH, I wish I said no to Rika at that moment!!! Take me back, take me back!"

It isn't so illogical when you consider the whole idea of the butterfly effect. This time Satoko talked to Rika and made her promise she would not abandon her, Satoko thought that that was enough to completely change the future.


BTW, not-featherinne has been addressing Satoko with names that refer to LambdaDelta. However, does this really mean that Satoko and Takano are conflated into a single archetype? Because Vier is this character from Ciconia, and visually that's almost a carbon copy of the Takano from Higurashi, even the ribbon and pin are the same. Or is it that not-featherinne is simply completely mistaking Satoko for Takano?

[maximilianjenus]

just wanting to point that, like in madoka magica, the intro lyrics are about satoko, not rika.

[FlareKnight]

I'm really getting the feeling that Gou isn't going to have been worth being made. Although I suppose on the positive side, OG Rika and the rest of the cast are actually fine. That was one worry going into this series in the first place. If this is Satoko putting herself through some insane journey for an entirely dumb reason, well that's her call. My condolences to...I guess Rika 2.0 who has had to be dragged along with this mess.

Satoko is really just sliding nicely towards Takano. Not getting quite there yet since murdering all the people in a village is a high bar to clear. But she's getting there. Of course unlike Takano who was entirely despicable. Satoko is just sad and kind of pathetic. Even with a second chance where she didn't even have to take action to jump into another world...she still made pretty terrible mistakes. And she continued to fail at understanding or accepting where Rika wanted to go with her life.

It would be so incredibly easy for Satoko to avoid things going badly. After all the crisis is lukewarm at best here. Either refuse to go to the school or make it work. She's got all the time in the world to get so good at her studies that it isn't even a chore for her anymore. But no, clearly trying to sabotage Rika and going all murder-suicide is the logical route to take.

Definitely weird how the loop worked out. Did this being just happen to find another Rika who just managed to clear her trial to throw this Satoko at? I suppose it's a good thing that Satoko did kill her since I'm not sure how many times that being could find more Rika's clearing a nearly impossible death game.

I was at least hoping the Hinamizawa syndrome was kicking in again or something. But nope...Satoko just went down this route for pretty sad reasons.

Edit:

Also, just wanted to throw out a thought. I'm going to presume that the Rena trying to kill Keiichi thing was fueled by Satoko being angry at these two for how they ran the club after Mion left. With some kind of logic that if they had run the club like Mion did then Rika wouldn't have wanted to leave. It seemed weird in the first place how that first arc played out. But targeting Rena and Keiichi somehow makes perfect sense now. It would also be fairly appropriate for Rika to express to Keiichi that he needs to trust Rena while her issues partially stemming from putting too much faith in Satoko.

[BBOvenGuy]

LOL @ "Endless fractal baseball"

Although... in 1984, The Fractal Geometry of Nature had only been in print for a year, and I'm not sure it had been translated into Japanese yet. Pretty impressive, then, for a bunch of hick-town school kids to know the word "fractal" and what it means.

Meanwhile,

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

It isn't so illogical when you consider the whole idea of the butterfly effect. This time Satoko talked to Rika and made her promise she would not abandon her, Satoko thought that that was enough to completely change the future.

"If a single flap of a butterfly's wings can be instrumental in generating a tornado, so also can all the previous and subsequent flaps of its wings, as can the flaps of the wings of millions of other butterflies, not to mention the activities of innumerable more powerful creatures, including our own species." So wrote Edward Lorenz, who coined the term "the butterfly effect" in the first place. He concluded that small disturbances neither increase nor decrease the frequency of weather events (he was a meteorologist), but instead only changed the sequence in which those events occurred. So if, for example, there were going to be five hurricanes in a given year, the flap of a butterfly's wings might affect the dates one or more of those hurricanes formed, but there would still be five hurricanes.

(I'm currently writing a biography series about mathematicians, and my last two subjects in the set are Benoit Mandelbrot and Edward Lorenz.)

[Liddo-kun]

episode 21:

why is it a "low blow" if Rika decides to study alone? And why it seems the plot has become Rika has to like staying with Satoko forever or be killed? Something is weird with this story.

[MeoTwister5]

Wait a goddamn minute. Doesn't this episode imply that there were possibly two distinct time looper Rikas in existence? The Rika of the original series that eventually found her escape in the original Matsuribayashi-hen, and a Rika that also got a Matsuribayashi-hen fragment but ended up dying while in St. Lucia?

The fact that this series' Rika knew about her loops and felt despair in thinking she finally escape only to die, implies that she is one, unless original looper Rika dies in Matsuribayashi-hen (which negates this answer arc being a good ending). It's highly unlikely that they'd retcon Matsuribayashi-hen into a bad ending, so the only explanation is that there's a second Rika looper. Which possibly also implies a second Hanyuu?

Also curiously, it seems that in Satoko's first loop experience she was with a Looper Rika based on their bookstore convo. Why didn't Rika pick up that this Satoko knew things the regular Satoko wouldn't, in the same vein as she herself? Did it never occur to any of the Rikas that looping can occur with someone else?

At this point I'm not exactly sure what Satoko's endgame is. What's the point in killing Rika in her loops if she doesn't even know if Rika's a looper? If she wants to teach Rika a lesson into staying in Hinamizawa, then killing Rika to teach her a lesson only works if Rika's a looper. Otherwise if she thinks she's the only looper, not Rika, it's pointless and it's better to off herself and try a better approach with the next non-looper Rika. Killing her would be a pointless effort unless she DOES know that she's bound to a looping Rika.

Honestly though this doesn't paint either of them in a good light, well, not any better than a standard R07 character anyway. This gives us the impression that Rika's a much more selfish person than the original series makes her out to be, who's end goal is to escape the trap of 1983 and more than willing to brush aside her friends once she makes her escape. Satoko on the other hand come off as a person with extreme attachment and codependency issues.

[DemonOfWrath]

I think the whole Rika time looping but not (i.e. not acting like she's gone through this already) question in this episode can be answered by death being needed as a condition. (Assumption: Same condition for both of them.)

The way I'm thinking about it is looper dies, time rewinds/resets/however you want to think about it (I think rewinding gives the cleanest mental image in this case), and looper's consciousness goes with it if condition is met. Presumably Satoko dies (in weird dimension or whatever) to reset the first loop but Rika doesn't, having it make sense that only Satoko is aware that it's a repeat, cause only Satoko met the looper condition that time.

Satoko murder-suiciding with Rika the second time around will probably pull Rika back into the looping too and that's where it starts for her.

[Jaden]

I'm a little bit more sympathetic towards Satoko now, since she was literally cast in the role of the villain, and given no option to refuse.

When you do the looping thing for long enough, of course you would develop a blasé attitude towards death, and even murder.

...Or that's what I thought, but then she goes all-in on the very first loop. Splat!

Uhh...wasn't that supposed to happen 5 years after the original story? Ret con?

At this point I'm not exactly sure what Satoko's endgame is. What's the point in killing Rika in her loops if she doesn't even know if Rika's a looper?

I would've liked an answer too - but the way I see it, she definitely knows. Probably after coming to terms with her new power, Satoko connected the dots with what Not-Featherine said, and Rika's strange behavior.

[The Green One]

Yes how dare Rika make mistakes interacting with her friend after freshly escaping from hundreds of death loops at long last and finally getting the new life she'd desperately wanted and despaired of ever getting. How dare she be anything less than utterly perfect at all times with her human interactions.

Yes how dare she.

*cough*SARCASAM*cough*

[Kanon]

Originally Posted by Jaden

Uhh...wasn't that supposed to happen 5 years after the original story? Ret con?

They didn't show the date in this episode, but I assume Satoko killing herself and Rika happened at the same date as the "prank" in the original timeline, so it is five years.

[Jaden]

Hmm okay...it's hard to see the timeline here.

I thought:

1983: original story concludes, they are studying for entrance exam
1984: enroll at St Lucia
1985: second year at St Lucia, Satoko demoted to special class, goes wild

But thinking about it again, Mion was driving a van ... and is in college with Rena and Keiichi. They were 14 years old in 1983, so I guess it really has been 5 years.

[Kakurin]

Originally Posted by Jaden

Hmm okay...it's hard to see the timeline here.

I thought:

1983: original story concludes, they are studying for entrance exam
1984: enroll at St Lucia
1985: second year at St Lucia, Satoko demoted to special class, goes wild

But thinking about it again, Mion was driving a van ... and is in college with Rena and Keiichi. They were 14 years old in 1983, so I guess it really has been 5 years.

In episode 19 the calendar is shown the day Satoko / Rika go to check their admission test results and it's March 1, 1987.

Also, St. Lucia is a high school while in 1983 both Satoko and Rika were still elementary grade schoolers. So they had to pass their final year of elementary school plus 3 years of middle school to get there.

[BBOvenGuy]

Originally Posted by DemonOfWrath

I think the whole Rika time looping but not (i.e. not acting like she's gone through this already) question in this episode can be answered by death being needed as a condition. (Assumption: Same condition for both of them.)

The way I'm thinking about it is looper dies, time rewinds/resets/however you want to think about it (I think rewinding gives the cleanest mental image in this case), and looper's consciousness goes with it if condition is met. Presumably Satoko dies (in weird dimension or whatever) to reset the first loop but Rika doesn't, having it make sense that only Satoko is aware that it's a repeat, cause only Satoko met the looper condition that time.

Satoko murder-suiciding with Rika the second time around will probably pull Rika back into the looping too and that's where it starts for her.

Having two loopers presents all kinds of trouble. Are Hanyuu and not-Featherine coordinating so that Rika and Satoko always loop to the same new reality? Or is there only one new reality that a looper can go to at any one time? What happens when they don't die at the same time? When not-Featherine took Satoko out of her original world, the Rika of that world was alive and well. Where did she go?

Unless there's some force - either not-Featherine or the extradimensional forces of nature - making sure that Rika and Satoko always go to the same new world, the only alternative is that we have an infinite number of Rikas and an infinite number of Satokos all looping and crossing each other's paths.

One other thing - Does Satoko know that Rika is looping? I forget how much of her situation Rika explained to the others in the original series. If Satoko doesn't know that Rika is looping, then there's no need to kill her - no more need than there is to kill Rena or Keichi or Mion or any of the others. She just has to die herself. So the murder-suicide at St. Lucia is just something done out of spite.

If, on the other hand, Satoko does know that Rika is looping, then presumably she was triggering the Syndrome in various people through those quickie-loops as a way of beating Rika down. Do we then assume that Satoko killed herself once she confirmed that Rika was dead? If so, then we're back to the problem of how Rika and Satoko manage to get to the same new world every time.

I'm a dreadfully slow writer myself, and one reason why is that I have a very low threshold when it comes to what I call the "Don't worry about it" factor. Every story reaches a point where you've got to stop worrying about the logical tangles and just accept it for what it is. I'm somewhat jealous of writers who can just blow through the logical tangles they encounter, because I can't. With a looping Satoko, the "Don't worry about it" factor in this show has been cranked up to eleven.

[Kanon]

Featherine is probably the one who makes sure they both end up in the same world. I'm sure she's powerful enough to do that, especially since Hanyuu herself, by her own admission, has lost most of her powers.

There is no indication that Satoko knew Rika could loop at the time of this episode (she definitely figured it out later, otherwise there wouldn't be much point in trying to brainwash her before killing her), so yes, she killed her out of spite in this episode.

[MCAL]

https://higurashianime.com/story/005_022.html

Preview for the next episode. Probably the most spoilerish so far showing Takano returning and what looks like Satoko in the underground clinic (The one where Satoshi is supposed to be in).