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

[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by EroKing

That was not ok... For the first time, I had a difficult time finishing watching an ep. This level of gore can mentally screw someone up bad. Wanted to drop it but it being the 16th episode already I still want to see how it ends.... FU*K! Who the hell approved that level of gore/violence to be shown?

Yea I'm not spending several minutes watching one of my favorite characters get torn apart. And I even chuckled in the last episode in parts.

Turned off, and skipped episode.

[maximilianjenus]

now i am putting the blame on hanyu even more, i remember a lot of dont leave scenes in the old higurashi ( or was it its manga) so hanyu doing that to rika fits the bill, as well as rika being called a cat and a miko ( umineko info)

[The Green One]

Perhaps we're watching what will eventually culminate in the creation of "Bernkastel" (The Umineko one)

[Jaden]

"Why do you hate this village so much??" she says, after having Rika get butchered repeatedly, and finally doing it herself.

Maybe some will argue that she is really the looper and the mastermind, and is just deflecting here by pretending to have gone insane. And that actually, there is some deeper motive. To me, it looks more like she's just being used, like the others.

Next episode opens the "Takano" door. If there's nothing behind it, there will be nobody left to suspect, and I guess we will move to some magic mindfuck territory.

[MeoTwister5]

Well I'm not to keen to see Rika become a Sisyphean character who will accept staying in Hinamizawa for the rest of her life and essentially accept whatever comes her way. Granted this MIGHT be the perfect shard where no one dies, but I can't be content with the assumption that all of these along with Rika's survival are contingent on her staying in Hinamizawa for the rest of her life.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

Well I'm not to keen to see Rika become a Sisyphean character who will accept staying in Hinamizawa for the rest of her life and essentially accept whatever comes her way. Granted this MIGHT be the perfect shard where no one dies, but I can't be content with the assumption that all of these along with Rika's survival are contingent on her staying in Hinamizawa for the rest of her life.

Probably not, and it wouldn't make sense for everything to resolve just because Rika suddenly decided to never leave Hinamizawa, unless this was all Hanyuu's doing, which would be a completely insane development.

But it doesn't change the fact that Rika actually thinks that she was wrong in moving to another place. I think there's a very good chance that whether this decision will have an impact on her current situation or not, she will still decide to stay in Hinamizawa in the end.

[MeoTwister5]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Probably not, and it wouldn't make sense for everything to resolve just because Rika suddenly decided to never leave Hinamizawa, unless this was all Hanyuu's doing, which would be a completely insane development.

But it doesn't change the fact that Rika actually thinks that she was wrong in moving to another place. I think there's a very good chance that whether this decision will have an impact on her current situation or not, she will still decide to stay in Hinamizawa in the end.

That's what I don't like about this situation. Deciding to stay in Hinamizawa makes it look like she's abandoning a normal life and that her life and fate is forever bound to the village. She managed to at least be able to live a life outside the village before getting dragged back in, and I'd like to think she still deserves a shot at a life like that again.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Maybe I'm just a bit jaded, but I was nowhere near being surprised with the disembowelment scene. Somehow I think it just fits for Higurashi. Was I disturbed? Well, a little bit, but not enough to stop me from eating my noodles while watching . The cartoony art-style is simply not intense enough for me. Try Shigurui or Gantz. Gou feels more like Happy Tree Friends

Anyway, yes, Takano! Finally! I've been wanting to see her role in all this. Will the rest of the Gou episodes be about exploring Tokyo & Inuyama? I mean, Gou already shown some shady workers & the clinic in previous loops. Unless those are just nods to previous shows, Gou might still have an arc for Takano & Tokyo. Of course, I don't want a repeat. It would be better if Gou can use Takano and her boys in a different direction.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

That's what I don't like about this situation. Deciding to stay in Hinamizawa makes it look like she's abandoning a normal life and that her life and fate is forever bound to the village. She managed to at least be able to live a life outside the village before getting dragged back in, and I'd like to think she still deserves a shot at a life like that again.

Totally agree, that's something that I stomach even less than the gory scenes.

[maximilianjenus]

umineko made those scenes look good by censoring them using pixelation, they actually uncensored them for the bd and the guts looked underwhelming.

[Klashikari]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

Evisceration didn't involve completely splitting the body in half. That would inevitably entail severing major arteries and, while I'm no medic, I think that would lead to severe hemorrhage and loss of consciousness very quickly, especially if someone is holding in you in an upright position.

Absolutely, I wasn't trying to argue about the second half of their discussion. The moment Satoko started mess Rika's innards after clobbering her, Rika should have died within like 1-2 minutes, so I will just use my suspension of disbelief there. My point was more about justifying how she could be alive with her stomach open for seemly several minutes before Satoko "ritual performance".

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

But it doesn't change the fact that Rika actually thinks that she was wrong in moving to another place. I think there's a very good chance that whether this decision will have an impact on her current situation or not, she will still decide to stay in Hinamizawa in the end.

It isn't like Rika actually thought she was wrong, but she was made to think that way. Sure, that scene with her older self looks like she had a epiphany, but considering her ordeal thus far and how the story showed her in tears in the next loop, I believe Rika is either broken / borderline brainwashed after all the mental and physical anguish, or she is feigning it to deceive her tormentor(s).

Knowing Ryukishi and the series at large, it is extremely unlikely for Rika to have accepted that situation as if she was wrong.

[BWTraveller]

Those last few moments brought back my old theory that 34 is the other looper, that she's managed to start looping herself and trying to either break Rika or bring things to her desired end using her improved knowledge. I mean, with strange people developing the condition this time, people who shouldn't have been present long enough to develop it, people whose constitution and mental state seemed to resist the specific stimulation that triggered it, people who are on drugs that keep it from surfacing, I can't help but suspect that the culprit is someone with access to enough material on the condition to forcibly trigger it, like I recall Takano did to Tomitake back near the end of the original.

[Jaden]

Yeah!!! welcome to Team Takano.

The show has continued to damage my confidence by not including her. Maybe any reasoning to find a human culprit never had any place in this story.

But in case we're right, all internet points will be confiscated from Team Satoko!!! And I'm changing my title to "Great Witch".

[The Green One]

Considering what Rika has gone through it'd be strange if she wasn't mentally and emotionally falling apart. An endless parade of death and despair sprinkled in with some hope spots to only intensify the despair when she gets dragged back in to hell.

[Kanon]

The joke has been made plenty of times by now, but Rika really was pretty much made to develop HSS (Hinamizawa Stockholm Syndrome). I don't think she's faking it, since we actually saw what was going on inside her mind.

[BWTraveller]

I don't know if I'd describe it as Stockholm Syndrome. Hinamizawa is a victim too in a sense, they're both trapped in this endless string of deaths.

[AC-Phoenix]

Satoko being the one to kill Rika makes her even more suspicious.
We know she's been in L5 before, but has never killed Rika before. Then she spouts knowledge she couldn't have known, at least according to our knowledge.

That being said, there is a rather simple solution to it: Unlike Rika, who is the source, Satoko is just another piece on the gameboard which isn't initially special.
I.e. even as a looper she wouldn't be immune to the the parasite.

Also Satoko clearly said "had to spill so much blood", not "your blood", but "so much blood."

I'll point to Umineko again here, because wordplays like that were a rather common thing and often the solution to major parts of the mystery.

Spoiler for Example from Umineko:

"The Clock struck twelve." The entire crime wouldn't be possible if it was actually the time the Clock said it was. However, by assuming the clock showed a wrong time, everything suddenly became possible.

[The Green One]

That's what this writer is known for. Nothing is truly as it seems the first time around. Context is everything.

[The Creator]

Originally Posted by maximilianjenus

now i am putting the blame on hanyu even more, i remember a lot of dont leave scenes in the old higurashi ( or was it its manga) so hanyu doing that to rika fits the bill, as well as rika being called a cat and a miko ( umineko info)

Totally agree after this one. That would explain most things. Why she's absent, why all the killers seemed to know that Rika was the cause of HS, how she was able to get close to the killer and turn them crazy (since she's pretty much a ghost), what would make Rika tick, how exactly she got the info from the previous fragments, etc.

Really hope they don't go that way since it would not be a character development that would really fit her.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by The Creator

Really hope they don't go that way since it would not be a character development that would really fit her.

I mean, have you seen Rei that happened after Kai? This is the same Hanyuu who taught Rika a lesson by trapping her in a dream-reality where she had to kill her own mother (offscreen) to prove her determination to Hanyuu.

After that, Hanyuu simply apologized to Rika and brushed it off as a simple prank .