Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Higurashi: When They Cry – GOU
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Sven Viking
Posts: 1039 |
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(Ep 19 spoilers, though little that isn’t already visible above.)
I agree with ThatGuyWhoLikesThings. Rika’s not at fault — she has a very reasonable dream and reasonably wants her friend to be part of it. She likely thinks Satoko will ultimately benefit from and enjoy following this path (though if she thought about it more impartially she might realise how unlikely that actually is). It certainly isn’t her intention to build her dream upon forcing Satoko into giving up the things that make life worth living for her. From Satoko’s perspective, though, while unintentional she is virtually forced into it with her relationship with Rika held hostage. Satoko is highly dependent on Rika and the implication is that this dependent relationship will essentially end if she doesn’t give up years of her life to something she hates. It’s like a mother telling a child “you don’t need to maintain top grades in school, but if you don’t I’ll move away.” If Satoko had objected strongly enough, Rika might have changed her plans, but Satoko obviously doesn’t want to destroy her friend’s dream. (Also destroying her dream would itself risk souring their relationship to some extent.) Once she does get through those three years, though, she finally gets her reward: further separation from everything she knows and loves; everything she hated about the past three years cranked up to 11 for an additional three years; and an increasing and unprecedented separation from Rika both emotionally and physically. Certainly she doesn’t handle this well, but Rika doesn’t handle it particularly well either in making relatively little effort to keep in contact with Satoko when she should realise the situation is difficult for her in various ways. It should be noted that none of this is commonly accepted in law to provide valid justification for ritually disemboweling your friends — even when *not* as part of an endless torture loop. However I still think it’s quite possible Irie’s understanding of the disease is incomplete and he hasn’t realised a vestige of it can lie dormant in the liver long-term or something. If not, mightn’t there be some way she could have been reinfected after initially being cleared? |
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Sven Viking
Posts: 1039 |
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P.S. If Rika is murdered in her sleep or something, could that possibly explain the loops beginning again? spoiler[Hanyuu just pulls her back into a new loop to save her life?] Is there a reason it would need to begin in 1983 again rather than a more recent date?
spoiler[(Spoiler tagged since Gou hasn’t necessarily proven Hanyuu’s character to viewers) Could Hanyuu have given Satoko the ability to remember loops because she keeps messing up the happy ending in some way (e.g. becoming symptomatic early), and Hanyuu thinks seeing what she’s been causing will solve the issue? It seems like Satoko begins her loops earlier than Rika, since she has time to set up the Watanagashi ritual before Rika even wakes up in a new loop for example. Could that be a reason Hanyuu thinks she needs to work directly with Satoko rather than Rika, assuming that’s even possible? But doing so makes her so weak she can’t remember enough to just tell Rika what’s going on? My memory of Hanyuu’s powers/lore is fuzzy so this theory may not make sense.] |
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Maidenoftheredhand
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The story right now makes you think Satoko is the villain but I just don’t believe that to be the case..Higurashi makes you think a lot of things that aren’t really true so I am going to wait and see before passing judgement on Satoko.
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Sven Viking
Posts: 1039 |
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If nothing else it’s very possible she’s being manipulated by the real villain.
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ThatGuyWhoLikesThings
Posts: 1010 |
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At the very least, there must be a third party involved. A human can't just suddenly start looping on their own after all. And, uh, I don't wanna be pointing fingers, but there's only one individual in Higurashi canon that has been established as having the power to give humans looping abilities. |
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Sven Viking
Posts: 1039 |
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I have an unlikely partial theory on that in the spoiler section above which wouldn’t theoretically necessitate a villainous intent.
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KitKat1721
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I definitely feel for both Rika and Satoko. I don't think anyone can blame Rika at all for wanting to branch out, and I know she truly did want her best friend by her side. But Satoko just isn't a good fit for the school, and seeing her slowly figure that out and realize that she's essentially trapped there is pretty sad to watch. Sure she technically can leave pretty easily, but knowing what we know about Satoko, its not that simple. There's a lot of bitterness there because she feels like she's made such an effort for Rika just to be there, and is absolutely miserable, while Rika is just living it up having fancy tea parties while learning the art of debate spoiler[(look, they can't just throw blatant Umineko winks at me and expect me not to say anything. I swear next episode I'm going to see a chessboard on that table).]
While the stakes are definitely heightened due to the show's nature + Rika & Satoko's pasts, this kind of problem was not an uncommon occurrence going into high school in my own experience. Unfortunately, most of the good schools in my area required tests and/or interviews to get in (along with money unless you apply for scholarships). So during the second half of eighth grade, pretty much everyone was talking about where they want to go to apply, taking tours with friends, studying/prepping for admittance exams, comparing which ones are harder to get in, etc... and there are always some girls who end up going to schools that aren't a good fit for them. And whether forcing themselves to stay is due to being afraid to disappoint their parents, leave the friend group they've known for years, or embarrassment of not being able to cut it/wasting their parent's money... it makes for a rough freshman year that can be hard to bounce back from. Obviously not to the extreme Satoko is about to go to, but still. Also side note: I was skimming through the Higurashi Gou manga (the first few chapters are free on Ace's official site, but in Japanese obviously), just to see if there were any neat visual additions, but the biggest takeaway so far is the re-ordering of events. The choice to have the whole "turns out Rika is stuck in another loop" scene with her and Hanyuu in the fragment world happen after the end of the first arc (post Ep. 4) instead of right at the start of Ep. 2 like in the anime reads so much better. I feel like even for viewers who don't have all the context, things are at least set up to be a lot more clear. I'm sure they included it in Ep. 2 because they were nervous about people not watching due to thinking it was just a straight-up re-telling, but to that I say "Cowards" hahaha The moment just feels way more impactful because not only do we get the shocking twist element of the show's true nature (a continuation, not a remake), the whole scene feels way more emotional with heavier stakes. We literally just saw everyone (including Rika) die horrifically, and we realize pretty quickly, as Rika does, that those horrible events are going to keep happening until she figures out what's going on. Where as in the anime its more just a "wtf is going on, oh I guess its not a remake" scene. |
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gedata
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Not really. Every time she asks Satoko if she's having any difficulties, Satoko just attempts to laugh it off as if everything is going swell. Bottling up stress like that is just how Satoko behaves, just as the case with all the fragments where her Uncle forces his way back into her life. |
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whiskeyii
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This was the first time watching this series where I thought to myself "Huh, maybe Rika and Satoko aren't so great together after all". It definitely feels to me that in any other series, this would be akin to the growing pains of friends growing apart and finding that the person you thought you were besties with isn't someone you really have all that much in common with. That said, Satoko is absolutely stuck in a school whose culture she totally doesn't jive with, stuck doing work she hates, and that's enough to make anyone start resenting what they perceive to be the cause of all that: i.e., Rika's desire for change. I know Satoko has a history of bottling her emotions, but I had hoped with the resolution of the Good Ending, she would've actually stuck to what she learned at the tail end of that arc about leaning on others/asking for help. This is definitely one of those moments where I was staring at my screen yelling "Oh my God, just TALK to each other already!!!", because this definitely feels like an issue of miscommunication at the heart of it all. But then we wouldn't have a story.
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ThatGuyWhoLikesThings
Posts: 1010 |
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Okay, but Rika should also be very familiar with that behavior by now. Fact of the matter is, while she might be showing some concern here and there, it's pretty apparent that she's thriving way too well in her new environment to try especially hard with helping her best friend. Nor does she even seem to stick up for her when her new friends openly insult her. Plus, it's not even just a matter of bottling up stress. Satoko can tell from years of experience when someone doesn't like her, and Rika's new circle isn't making it a secret that they look down on her and ostracize her for not conforming like the rest of them. |
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Sven Viking
Posts: 1039 |
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I don’t think Rika’s consciously seeing a problem and deciding not to help, but she just got what she’s been wanting [for decades?] and there’s little motivation to think too hard about unconfirmed possibilities with the potential to ruin her present happiness. Satoko probably just needs some time to adjust and then everything will continue to be perfect, surely?
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Saiphaz
Posts: 60 |
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This is what I find baffling. Did Rika forget about how they needed the entire village to unite just to get her to ask for help regarding his clearly abusive uncle? Satoko just went from one situation of helplessness to another, just as the village finally accepts her after a decade of ostracizing, Rika, who has a hundred years of experience regarding that treatment, just happens to drag Satoko into an environment known for elitism and bullying, as Shion, and a decade and a half later, Ange may attest, where Satoko had no desire to go nor business going, then promptly forget about her as she gets dazzled by the high society life. I'd understand if Rika were a normal teenager, but she has way more experience than that, not to mention she had a hundred years to get the moral of Higurashi about standing up for her friends drilled into her head. |
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ThatGuyWhoLikesThings
Posts: 1010 |
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I'll be fair to Rika and say that, while she might understand the important of communicating with your friends, it's never been something she's been particularly great at. Hell, when she finds out that Keiichi went to the storehouse in Watadamashi, she just needlessly lashes out and scares the shit out of him, rather than doing anything to help or give him any kind of reassurance. Keiichi and Mion have a way with words, Rika not so much. I can understand Rika's thought process. She wants to balance her old and new friends, but doesn't know how to (made all the more difficult when neither party wants anything to do with the other), and she doesn't want to do anything that might potentially sabotage the life she worked so hard for. Not to mention she's so blinded by how good St. Lucia is for *her* that she just doesn't consider that it...just isn't at all for Satoko. She might see that she's struggling with her grades, but doesn't seem to understand that the problem goes deeper than that. This doesn't at all justify her negligence of Satoko, and frankly I'm still on Satoko's side here, but I understand her position |
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Gem-Bug
 Posts: 1217 |
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Episode 20
spoiler[Heeeeeeeeere we go! Menacing Hanyuu/Featherine! Also, why does their school have a fuckin' jail? And inmate uniforms? What?] |
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killjoy_the
 Posts: 2460 |
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^ Yeah that just made me burst out laughing at the show
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