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

[MCAL]

https://twitter.com/cottondrift2/sta...44226293542913

Probably another interesting thing to note in regards to Satoko/Rika.

[MeoTwister5]

I bought Ciconia during a sale and haven't even touched it yet. Methinks I should.

[BBOvenGuy]

No character is completely irredeemable in the hands of a good enough writer. That said, bringing Satoko back would be a pretty big rabbit out of the hat. I think I can see now why they brought back the full loop with her uncle Teppei. It's my least favorite loop of all - to me, it drags along worse than just about anything other than "Endless Eight" - but it does show the environment Satoko comes from. She's acting just like a survivor of child abuse by a possessive, controlling parent - being possessive and controlling herself.

Rika made a lot of mistakes during all the time she was looping, and she didn't always treat her friends well, but she's only human and she had to figure out what was going on as she went, always with incomplete information. And in the end, all she wanted was to survive and live happily. Yes, she wanted Satoko to go to St. Lucia with her, but I very much doubt she would have ever started looping deliberately until Satoko gave in.

Honestly, I would be bailing on this show at this point, but there are only two episodes left and I figure I might as well see it through.

[The Green One]

Well maybe it's just this version of Satoko that's bug fuck looney tunes. I suppose if you have an infinite number of versions of a person you'll get an evil version of them somewhere.

I imagine based on the way fragments are a thing there are version of Satoko that handle this issue in a far more reasonable and mature manner then turning your former friend into your personal torture toy.

[FlareKnight]

Originally Posted by MCAL

https://twitter.com/cottondrift2/sta...44226293542913

Probably another interesting thing to note in regards to Satoko/Rika.

Honestly, I think Hanyuu is out to lunch on that one. Holding up on throwing the truth at someone as unstable as Satoko isn't exactly the wrong call. That everyone agreed to keep Satoko in the dark about Satoshi's condition even during the winning arc reflects that she isn't alone in that viewpoint.

Heck, this sequel is showing how inherently unstable Satoko is even without the Hinamizawa Syndrome to take into consideration. And it isn't as if Hanyuu is some inherently correct person by default. She spent a century in this halfway point between observer and participant. An ally for Rika and yet not willing to throw herself into the ring and stand with everyone until called out on it during the massacre chapter.

I don't think in general there is much comparison to be made between Satoko and Rika. One struggled for the sake of survival and the lives of those she cared about. The other is a psychopath that chooses to use that painful struggle as a chip to mentally break someone. The only thing I can take away from it is that Rika and Satoko need to go their separate ways regardless of how that ends up happening. Be it Rika jabbing that looper killer shard into Satoko's throat or somehow 'redeeming' Satoko and still going in different directions.

[Ayu-ayu]

I was a Satoko fan for the latter part of Higurashi but I didn't like her at first. So I feel like playing a little devil's advocate though I agree her actions are pretty reprehensible so far.

From my understanding of the story, I think that Satoko had a serious PTSD mental breakdown after the first repeat that was reinforced by her next attempts (and that's not even accounting for her pre-existing condition even). From her perspective, Rika not only is lying to her about lifting Satoko up with her at school, but also every plea she has made to Rika in every iteration has either been blown off or twisted around to meet Rika's agenda. That's pretty shitty to say the least. She still wants to believe Rika means what she says, but every opportunity she gave Rika to prove herself, Rika missed the point and pushed back harder. Now Satoko's reaction is still not something I'd expect from a reasonable person, but the point here is that Satoko sees herself as being pushed beyond reason. A path that leads to madness.

You would think that viewing all of Rika's fragments would set her straight, but she went in already broken and set in her perspective bias. You could argue she was particularly mad to try it in the first place. She would, in any case, largely be biased to be hyperfocused upon anything Rika did in those fragments that bolsters her own POV.

I also will note that we keep coming back to Satoko talking about what Oyashiro-sama wants and appreciating Hinamizawa. I do think still on some higher level this is about Oyashiro-sama as the soul of Hinamizawa not wanting to be abandoned. Hanyuu knows she can't directly talk Rika out of leaving. Hence a different angle of attack.

Overall though I still am expecting this to (whether it does it well or not) be a "missing link" story leading to the development of the LD and Bern characters we know from Umineko in one form or another. I like some of the more recent speculation about the ties between Miyo and Satoko but I remain curious to see if and how that plays out.

[Ayu-ayu]

Originally Posted by berin

Spoiler for vague Umineko/Ciconia stuff:

I saw some theories floating around that Lambdadelta is Satoko and Takano combined, with Satoko being Lambda and Takano being Delta, and that they're both 'two sides of the same coin'. Hence why Lambdadelta hates being called just 'Lambda', the screenshots above, the shared theme of 34 and certainty between them, not!Featherine's confusion on how to address Satoko in Gou, r07 saying Takano isn't Lambda (she's Delta), maybe how Satoko can mysteriously stop Takano from going all GHD, etc.

Under this framework, each WTC work would have them reoccurring: Higurashi has Satoko + Takano, Umineko has Lambdadelta as Lambda + Delta and Ciconia has Jestress + Vier.

Could just be wild guessing though.

Spoiler for Umineko and Ciconia:

Hm, the only thing I would change with that would be to have Umineko as LambdaDelta + Sayo, because LD isn't two seperate entities in Umineko. I haven't read Ciconia yet so I can't comment on Jestress + Vier.

[Jaden]

I think the show is trying to re-conceptualize Satoko as growing from a meek, abused child to an edgy teenager. It's just not doing a great job of depicting that change.

And the effect is amplified due to being addled by HS. At least according to Irie, even if you make a recovery, the changes in brain function are permanent, and that's why there's no cure for Satoshi. And Satoko was supposed to be on the medication forever.

Of course, Satoko used to be completely powerless, and protected herself by hiding behind others, escaping from reality, and finally just stoically accepting whatever abuse comes her way. Then, she was taught that's a mistake, that she has power, and must use it to grasp happiness.

Now she suddenly gains divine level power, so it's not unbelievable that she would fly off the handle and become a villain. No, maybe that's even the expected result, and that's why I say that Featherine "cast her in the role of a villain".

[DemonOfWrath]

All I want, is for the first image we see once we return back to before the flashbacks started to be a chair flying through the classroom. All I want.

[MeoTwister5]

Originally Posted by The Green One

Well maybe it's just this version of Satoko that's bug fuck looney tunes. I suppose if you have an infinite number of versions of a person you'll get an evil version of them somewhere.

I imagine based on the way fragments are a thing there are version of Satoko that handle this issue in a far more reasonable and mature manner then turning your former friend into your personal torture toy.

The problem here is that this is apparently the Satoko of the Matsuribayashi-hen good ending, and she was pulled out of that timeline by Featherine. So unless she comes back to that timeline redeemed of sorts then it kinda retcons Matsuribayashi-hen as a good ending for everybody.

In fact this already seems to retcon the good ending of the original Umineko because an unstable Satoko even without HS is already a recipe for disaster. They already managed to avoid that situation with Shion, but Satoko here is a literal lit fuse.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by Jaden

Now she suddenly gains divine level power, so it's not unbelievable that she would fly off the handle and become a villain. No, maybe that's even the expected result, and that's why I say that Featherine "cast her in the role of a villain".

I'm not sure how "expected" that is, especially when we have the example of Rika who has been looping for a hundred years in an environment of extreme violence and madness. You'd think she'd grow jaded and no longer care about human life, and yet she has never, never killed a friend, not even when they were clearly under the HS effect.

In Satoko's case, however, it only took one loop before she decided to kill her best friend, without even experiencing a fragment of the violence and horror that Rika had to endure.

[Ayu-ayu]

I still think it must be terrible to explicitly explain to your best friend why you know something is a bad idea for you and absolutely will not work, only for each time for them to seem to ignore you and happily insist they won't do exactly what you know they will do and push you to go along with it. The more you pull away, the harder they pull back. Rika is so set on leaving Hinamizawa and experiencing new things, she is completely blind to her friend's actual needs and concerns rather than the ones she imagines she has.

Is it enough to snap for a normal person? Maybe, maybe not, but I think with Satoko's history this must be the worst kind of betrayal she can imagine. After being told by Rika so many times with a smile that she should trust her and being pushed so hard. After so many times Rika seems to be listening and caring, yet does not hear Satoko's actual cry.

No, it doesn't measure up to the many times Rika looped, but should it have to for a young, abused girl with no one else she can rely so much on, to crack under this cruel and unusual pressure? None of us have had to relive the exact same events even a second time and be stuck unable to change things like an insect stuck in amber. I can only imagine what that would do to a young, previously traumatized mind, HS or no.

Rika did better at handling it, but her starting position (not abused, not affected by HS herself) was different and she had the help of Hanyuu next to her as an companion who understood her plight. She started relatively stable.

[Marina2]

Well, Satoko doesn't have to worry about getting kill by someone. not-Featherine also feed her all info she want to know, and can even grant her new power unlike Hanyuu in OG and Kai.

At present, this Satoko is no longer a traumatized child who need a hug, she's a danger individual that need to be locked away ASAP. It doesn't matter anymore who is right or wrong at St.Lucia.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

I'm not sure how "expected" that is, especially when we have the example of Rika who has been looping for a hundred years in an environment of extreme violence and madness. You'd think she'd grow jaded and no longer care about human life, and yet she has never, never killed a friend, not even when they were clearly under the HS effect.

In Satoko's case, however, it only took one loop before she decided to kill her best friend, without even experiencing a fragment of the violence and horror that Rika had to endure.

I don't like how quickly it dialed up either.

Rika probably became that way too, every now and then. But since she's somehow protected from HS, she avoided psychosis.

I think Hanyu's presence also suppressed Rika's worst impulses. Hanyu can be quite judgmental, whereas Featherine just praises Satoko for anything she does.

With Hanyu now gone, actually my initial theory for Gou was that Rika is the new villain. Would've made sense. With that denied, I figured it's the second coming of Takano. I didn't want to believe the Satoko theory, because while it was the most sound, it had the feeling of fitting a square peg into a round hole.

[Jan-Poo]

Hmmm refresh my memory. Did Rika actually became aware of Hanyuu since the beginning? I thought she only learned of her existence after several years of looping.

[Ligerleon89]

Originally Posted by Marina2

Well, Satoko doesn't have to worry about getting kill by someone. not-Featherine also feed her all info she want to know, and can even grant her new power unlike Hanyuu in OG and Kai.

At present, this Satoko is no longer a traumatized child who need a hug, she's a danger individual that need to be locked away ASAP. It doesn't matter anymore who is right or wrong at St.Lucia.

Locking Satoko up with her unresolved problems...she already broke down once at St Lucia, I doubt she would reflect upon herself in that scenario. Her abandonment issues won't vanish that way, even though it would keep her away from hurting others. This just had to be that moment where a person recovering HS on top of unresolved mental issues is given power. And like any immature person who gets lost in their own flawed reasoning, said person decides to make her well former friend worse just because of mistakes that was twofold, one that is on Satoko as well.

All I know is that this thing is going to get messy.

[The Green One]

When friendship goes toxic that means they're not your friend anymore. You can choose to try to "fix them" by why is it your responsibility to do so?

Only two things really happen. Either the (former) friend "sees reason" and you reach a mutually acceptable compromise or your cut your losses and cut the toxic influence loose.

Of course in this case you're getting tormented by the worst kind of non romantic/sexual yandere who's trapping you with supernatural powers and is torturing your remaining friends/loved ones who have now become collateral damage.

This isn't some saturday morning cartoon you can cry and hug out with the power of friendship. Serious physical, mental, and emotional harm has been done here.

Unless we have the most cliched power of love/friendship bsery that we are supposed to somehow accept and Rika is supposed to let bygones be bygones about herself and her other friends being tortured and slaughtered by Satoko's machinations. What's that? Isn't that what Rika did with Takano because I have the high ground *cough* I mean morals? Well Rika doesn't continue to interact with Takano after she's been stopped unless I'm misremembering something. Not to mention the actual crime was prevented in the good ending and the former incidents are from separate worlds and can't be held against this Takano reasonably.

I'm sorry, I've had to see some pretty rank bs in anime but this is pushing the limit. What we have here is a sociopath/psychopath who has you trapped in an inescapable death loop where the only escape is putting the insane lunatic down permanently with the permadeath mcguffin, suiciding with the permadeath mcguffin because wwwwahhhhhh I can't hurt my friend because FRIENDSHIP, or somehow talking sanity back into the sociopath/psychopath and making damn sure they rot in an asylum somewhere for the rest of their life and maybe visit them on weekends if you insist on friendship.

[Ayu-ayu]

I do think Satoko is caught in a Logic Error here which is part of her psychosis. She's pretty broken in any case, and seems determined to project that onto breaking Rika. I suspect any resolution will require resolving this Logic Error in one form or another. But there's not a lot of time left, so yeah, this could get messy, or R07's liar t-shirt also applies to the show really resolving at the end of the cours.

Spoiler for Umineko blah blah blah:

The nasty way this is turning out really feels like the relationship that evolved between LD and Bern...two twisted sadists out to show their "love" for each other through increasing forms of torture.

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Hmmm refresh my memory. Did Rika actually became aware of Hanyuu since the beginning? I thought she only learned of her existence after several years of looping.

I seem to recall that as the miko and seventh descendent, she could perceive Hanyuu from the outset. I think I even recall it caused friction between her and her mother, but that may be my aging memory playing tricks again.

[FlareKnight]

I'm feeling that there's no way this can end in the episodes remaining. Not at the pace they are going. Honestly it barely feels like we have enough episodes to explore the remainder of this flashback before getting back to where we were before the flashbacks started. Unless Rika is going to distract Satoko before jabbing that looper killer shard into her throat...this has to get another season.

Still feel like they are going to try to redeem Satoko by the end. Although I can't imagine anyone could do so in a satisfying manner at this stage. She's gone so far off the rails that I can't even come up with a good enough metaphor to capture it . It would be ironic though to have Takano survive after all she did and not have Satoko survive. To have her story end with her appearing before...the deity supporting her insanity, ask for another crack at Rika and get a "lol nope" as a response.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by The Green One

Not to mention the actual crime was prevented in the good ending and the former incidents are from separate worlds and can't be held against this Takano reasonably.

Except for the part where Takano had both of Rika's parents killed. That's not exactly a minor crime for Rika to forgive.