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ANIME DramaHigurashi: When They Cry - GOU
MANGA DramaHigurashi When They Cry: GOU
MANGA DramaHigurashi When They Cry: MEGURI
ANIME HorrorHigurashi no Naku Koro ni (Shin Anime)

REVIEWS

• 

  Magenta

  30/100
  A story stuck on a broken record.

  This review contains spoilers for Higurashi

  I’d recommend reading my review of Gou (click here to read it) to better understand my positions on this series. Sotsu has made many areas of it age like slim milk, but it describes my general feelings of Gou and my expectations going into this.

  ---

  Out of literally any piece of media that I have experienced, and even those that have been released, the existence of Higurashi Sotsu stands out as a strange anomaly. A sequel to Higurashi, which already had a perfect conclusion with the end of Kai/Festival Accompanying, would strike many people as pointless. There have been sequels to anime that have already had perfect endings before, but in the way that Sotsu does it, there is nothing that is comparable. This is the point where the marketing of the series comes in, since it is basically inseparable from the season that it's attached to. The bait and switch with the lead on that it was a followup to Higurashi Gou, the season that started the new 2020 sequel of Higurashi to continue the story ended off by Higurashi Rei. Instead it ended up being an extended recap of the first four arcs of Gou that told the viewers nothing of substance with only two episodes of an actual sequel at the end. That is it. There is no silver lining. There is no second cour to save it all. That is what Sotsu is plainly.

  I really don’t want to come off as someone who hates this series just because or somebody who finds no appreciation in When They Cry. My review linked above should show that I really like Gou even despite all of its problems. Even now, post-Sotsu, I still wouldn’t change my score from what it is right now. Even if it probably defies the reasonable part of me, the second cour leaves such a lasting impression in my mind that I really can’t hate it. The expectations that I had going into this were insurmountable with how much affinity I had for both Gou and the original series. You can even see that optimism in my review.

  ”...the revelations involving the point of the existence of this entire season have been so well handled by the final arc of this season, that I barely have any worries about how Sotsu will go about handling the act of providing answers.”

  sometimes i wish i could erase my memories and just go back to june 2021 when i was ignorant of what would soon come

  My optimism quickly became thoroughly crushed as most of the series became relegated to recapping things that I had already seen twice before. Sotsu recaps Gou’s first four arcs with changes that are inconsequential in progressing the story or further developing characters than what is surface level. But just saying that it is bad purely because it recaps ignores the finer details. When actually breaking down Sotsu’s arcs, most of it is actually composed of new content. Recapping even as a concept isn’t something new to Higurashi. One of Higurashi’s best arcs, Meakashi-hen, recaps Watanagashi-hen for a lot of its story. In a more comparable example, Gou pulled a very similar trick for its first three arcs, and while those arcs are still questionable in terms of quality, there is still an ocean of difference in storytelling of Gou’s recaps to Sotsu’s recaps. Sotsu's recapping problem isn’t a problem of the recapping itself. Rather, it ends up being such an issue due to it being a culmination of multiple core issues that made the story irreparably broken from the very start.

  The biggest positive take away from both Gou and Sotsu is the interweaving character arcs of Satoko and Rika. The deep dive that Nekodamashi-hen and Satokowashi-hen took into the two of them made a lot of what Gou does best at. After Gou though, there was only so much room that the story could take for the two of them. After those two arcs, the two characters were nearing the end of their character arcs. Gou was setting up Sotsu to conclude their arcs, but there was a major problem. With Sotsu’s 15 episode length, the series can’t stall Satoko and Rika’s growth to the point of unwatchability. Looking back on the original series, this issue seems irrelevant. While each story arc usually centered around one character, overall, it was about the people of Hinamizawa. The ensemble cast of Higurashi is part of the reason why it even works so well. Beyond all of the gore and horror, there is a unifying message of friendship and community that the relationships of every character helps to truly sell. Keiichi, Rena, Mion, and Shion along with Satoko and Rika share equal parts in what makes Higurashi what it is. With this fact in mind, it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that Sotsu’s purpose was to justify the inclusion of the rest of the gang in the story. Sotsu does in fact try to go in this direction for most of its episodes. However, it fell completely short of justifying it.

  Aside from time spent on Satoko and Rika, Sotsu’s first two arcs, Oniakishi-hen and Wataakishi-hen are dedicated to showing Rena and Mion’s descent at the hands of Hinamizawa syndrome. This shouldn’t be an immediate problem, but it does come off as unoriginal as Rena had already gone through the syndrome in Tsumihoroboshi-hen. Mion going through her fits of paranoia on the other hand isn’t something the series has dipped into before. It is in the execution where things start to falter. In Oniakishi-hen, Rena doesn’t experience a new dive into insanity. Instead, she experiences events that read like a hybrid of Oniakishi-hen and Tsumihoroboshi-hen. While this wouldn’t immediately catch a viewer as something wrong in a vacuum, where things start to become far more egregious is with Wataakishi-hen. Since Mion hadn’t gone through the syndrome, she had the most potential of having a story be something that was truly unique. Instead of something truly tailored to her character, she gets an arc very similar to Shion’s in Meakashi-hen but instead of Satoshi, Mion goes crazy over Keiichi. Even though they are twins, Shion and Mion are very different characters. The massive gap between their personalities should say that by itself. To see Mion go through an arc so similar to her sister’s shows a disregard for what potential a story where she is the one taken over by paranoia can have. The existence of Hinamizawa syndrome plaguing someone usually shows the deepest insecurities of a character that get revealed more and more as they succumb to it. This complex nature of the syndrome gets lost in Wataakishi-hen since it shows a very simplistic outlook on Mion’s character that conflicts with what she actually would be like.

  Aside from the lack of respect to Rena and Mion being shown here, these two arcs don’t really reveal much in terms of new story details. A lot of the reveals from these arcs are shallow mysteries that could easily be understood by Gou’s reveal of Satoko being a villain. The reveals given are usually ones that can only lead to mild satisfaction rather than something that can carry a story. In a series previously flourishing with bombastic unpredictable moments, the series quickly becomes something that is a boring predictable slog. Up until the series caught up to post-Gou Episode 17, it only really took a little bit of thinking to what the series would mostly be made up of for the first 13 episodes. The first 56 seconds of a meme video predicting the plot of Sotsu below that released after Gou ended shows this accidentally showed Sotsu’s predictability.

  this video contains some umineko spoilers after 0:56 if you don’t want to see it

  The first 56 seconds were created in a very non-serious manner. But it also provides a look into the mentality of many of what Sotsu was going to be in between the last episode of Gou and the first episode of Sotsu. While we may have expected a recap of this nature, the expectation more relied on it being something very quick. But with how the meme plays out, it unintentionally achieves just as much plot progression as Sotsu does in its first 13 episodes. While a lot of the details are incorrect, it doesn’t end up mattering by the end. Since most of the reveals in the first 13 episodes end up being so inconsequential, the end result of the first half of the meme and the first thirteen episodes of the show end up being nearly identical. The general events of Sotsu are a skeleton of a much larger story. It is easy to see what that skeleton was going to be after watching Gou. This skeleton needed flesh and tissue to this skeleton for it to even function. Sotsu ended up just being the skeleton. With only bones and nothing else. With the barren skeleton of Sotsu, it may not technically be a full recap of Gou’s first few arcs, but it may as well have been.

  After Oniakishi-hen and Wataakishi-hen came Tatariakishi-hen. It ended up being more of the same as the first two arcs. In terms of every arc that came before the events of Gou Episode 17, this was probably the best one. It should be noted though, that is only on account for it primarily featuring Satoko, who at this point is one of the only interesting characters left. Even then though, her character development stalls until the end of Episode 10 where one Sotsu's actual moments of intrigue occurs. She isn’t in a position for her character to progress far ahead yet, so she stays static for the most part aside from the aforementioned end of Episode 10. Teppei isn’t that interesting compared to Gou, since most of what made him intriguing in this series happened in Gou Episode 23. With that mini redemption arc over, he doesn't exactly have much to grow past that. While I am glad that the framework set up by Gou made his turn to a good guy make sense, that doesn’t stop Sotsu from feeling dry when developing him. Ooishi suffers from a similar problem as Mion in Wataakishi-hen but to a less disrespectful degree. Ooishi under Hinamizawa syndrome is more just a surface level understanding of what he probably would do when affected rather than a new interesting direction for his character. At least there wasn’t a fundamental misunderstanding as to who they are unlike Mion. Tatariakishi-hen doesn’t introduce any more problems, but it just continues old ones. This can also be applied to the first half of Kagurashi-hen. In my personal experience of the arc, Tatariakishi-hen represented the point as to where I realized that this season was going to fall remarkably under my expectations no matter what happened. There was nothing much to do but wait for the end where something good may actually happen.

  When looking at it all back, it becomes extremely hard to either justify why or explain how this even happened. Why would Sotsu slow its plot into oblivion to the state that it is like this? This can be drawn down to Sotsu’s converging priorities. With how characters other than Rika and Satoko are treated in Sotsu, it is clear that there is little interest in developing anybody else except for them. On the other hand, the series is also aiming to be similar to the original Higurashi, by being in the same general location of Hinamizawa as well as the month of June 1983 for a plurality of the runtime. This desire for familiarity is what I assume led to the conspicuous marketing of Gou as well as Gou’s first cour being composed of arcs that draw most of their plot from arcs that already happened. A familiar setting for Higurashi also will naturally require the ensemble cast of Higurashi to primarily be featured. This is where these two goals start to clash. With the apparent lack of interest in anybody except for Satoko and Rika, there would be no way for the familiar setting of Hinamizawa to work well with the story being told. Since Hinamizawa is linked to the people that live there, setting a story in Hinamizawa would mean to show the stories of those residents as well. However, the story doesn't care to do so, leaving the plot in a predicament that could only end in absolute failure. Gou managed to circumvent this by mostly setting Satokowashi-hen outside of Hinamizawa and having its first cour have at the very least, a slight allure of mystery. By Sotsu, this house of cards completely collapses in on itself. The story has to include Rena and Mion arcs, but it gives off the impression that it doesn't care enough to truly invest the effort into making those arcs truly worthwhile.

  After the grueling slog of Episodes 1-13, Episode 14 actually manages to be something exciting for once. Finally the continuation of the series after Nekodamashi. This episode actually manages to capture the quality of the second cour of Gou in just one concentrated instance. But if there is one image that can describe Sotsu’s main problems, it is this one.

  

  It depicts one of the bouts of Satoko and Rika as they clash with Onigari-no-ryuuou. As good as this moment is for both Satoko and Rika, there is nobody on screen except for the two of them. As a matter of a fact, throughout all of the fragments where they fight, other characters don’t appear in all but one. The junkyard at this point is an empty stage just to serve in this battle. As good as this episode is, it can’t save what is already here. Episode 14, and I’d even say Episode 15, were each very good episodes. I feel extremely satisfied with the conclusion for the two of them, no matter how flawed it is. However, Sotsu’s primary purpose was not to make the last two episodes good. After Gou, that became nearly guaranteed. Sotsu’s purpose was to justify the existence of everything outside of that. But it failed to do that purely because it didn’t care enough to actually do so.

  I usually like to end negative reviews like these on a hopeful note, but for the longest time, the series screwing itself up this badly near the finish line made it hard to hope for this type of thing. Against all odds though, there is something to hope for.

  

  The Higurashi Gou manga is diverging from the anime. After Nekodmashi, instead of Satakowashi, there is going to be an alternative story, called Higurashi Jun. Maybe it is just that this series has conditioned me to pray for miracles, but I have hope for this. From the little I know about the Gou manga, I know that it at least goes on a far more focused course than its anime counterpart. My hope is that the manga can provide a better resolution for what Gou had set up to provide an emphatic conclusion that a series like this needs. I need at least something to reinvigorate my passion for this show again.

  But ignoring the manga, Sotsu has to be one of the most underwhelming anime that I have ever seen. It is torn between two different goals that end up ripping itself apart. It has no regard for characters other than the ones that it wants to develop. It stalls to such an extreme that any good qualities that it has get severely dampened. It was facing tragedy, and did absolutely nothing to stop it. As it stands, this series is broken. And with the high hopes I had going into this, that is very disappointing.

  ---

  Thank you for reading to the end of the review if you did. If you have any criticisms of how this review was made, you are free to message me or reply to this activity to critique what I had to say.

  Also, please don’t like or dislike the review without reading it.

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• 

  JJAB91

  50/100
  This is the most disappointed I've been in an anime since Darling in the Franxx.

  I want to preface this by saying this is not going to be some fancy review that goes in depth about the inner themes of Higurashi or whatnot. I'm just someone who watched the original Higurashi anime and loved it and went on to read the authors other VN Umineko and loved that more than any other piece of fiction and want to express my immediate thoughts after watching the final episode of Sotsu. Spoilers of course.

  Man, What the fuck is this? How do you spend 99% of the show rehashing the same exact scenes from Gou and then actually give us only 2 episodes of actual new story and rush through everything thats actually important? Is this ending supposed to be good? None of this was earned.

  For weeks I and many others thought Sotsu being only 15 episodes must be a ruse, that they'll pull a Gou and have a secret arc or that it'll end with an announcement for another season or movie because as they were going it became more and more clear that in no way could they wrap everything up. Why does Sotsu spend so much of its little time reusing scenes but when it came to actual mysteries or new content like Satoko injecting people or everything post-gun scene they rush through it and pretty much tell us not to think about it? Not to think when forcing us to think about every little detail is R07's entire thing.

  So much is just left unresolved. What about that scene near the end of Gou or start of Sotsu where Satoko is talking to Eua about how Keiichi and Takano were going to be very important pieces going forward? Nothing ever happened with that. They made Satoko the main character but did NOTHING with Irie or Satoshi or Shion all of whom are important in one way or another to Satoko and they were practically not even in the show. What about how the show kept brining up how more and more people were gaining memories of other loops? They hinted at this as being more and more important and just...nothing ever becomes of it. Yeah Satoko's uncle becomes nice and thats it. And even thats just used as a plot device to show how Satoko got the gun. Remember when we all thought Rena seeing everything at the end of Tatariakashi-hen would amount to something? What about the obvious and constant parallels between this and Umineko? The show shoved down our throats themes about witches and about miracles and certainty and...nothing became of that either! I remember the line where Satoko thought all the fragments were no more than like dreams and none of them matter as soon as she leaves them and thinking that Satoko would eventually get her comeuppance when she realized that those worlds DO matter and are not just dreams. But NOPE no such thing even happens. Satoko spends centuries watching Rika's struggles and then plotting and planning and murdering all her friends over and over and at the end its all okay because Rika forgives her? That such a cop out holy shit. Shes never held responsible for any of her actions. Rika never even acknowledges that Satoko ruined the ending they worked hard for after 100+ years of suffering or anything shes done at all, all the actual important parts are ignored for the sake of talking about studying.

  The entire fight between Eua and Hanyuu just...stops. She becomes a loli and then leaves and thats it. The entire fight between Rika and Satoko just....stops. Keiichi, Mion and Rena talk to them and then Rika leaves to go about to St. Lucia and thats it. Its like the writers just gave up.

  The original Higurashi spent 10 episodes setting up the main culprit and resolving everything and wrapping up the story nicely. All questions were answered and the story concluded. Sotsu just sits on its ass for 13 episodes and has 2 episodes that actually continued the story 1 of which was all DBZ fight scene and now this rushed ending where nothing is deserved. What was the point of ANY of this? Its not like they're was a mystery or answers in Sotsu as the answer was revealed to us halfway through Gou.

  The end of the episode with "You" playing and showing everyone from the series(even if they pretty much didn't even appear in Gou and Sotsu) makes me WANT to enjoy this, Sotsu wants me to feel emotional and have a sense of closure for the series as a whole but its failed in every possible way because it didn't earn this. This ending wasn't earned.

  This is immensely frustrating and disappointing. I can not understate how disappointed I am. What the fuck Ryukishi?

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• 

  VivavideoUser2x

  42/100
  Sotsu is a very disappointing, exhausting mess of a "sequel" , with its only good moments being recaps from Gou.

  A short,sweet and simple Sotsu review from a short,simple,and bittersweet person .There are spoilers for Gou,so if you havent watched that. Don't come for me if I spoil you.
  
  Let's just be quick with this, Gou was kind of messy in spots but had moments that stuck with me.But Sotsu is just a mess story wise. So much so that it makes Gou seem like a fluke.

  STORY

  Sotsu is the prime example of an anime that doesn't know how to use it's time well at all. This is a 15 episode anime with about five episodes worth of content. Calling it a sequel is such a stretch..Sotsu is a gloried recap of the first season. But this time, it fills in the gaps for why the events in Gou transpired. Sadly though, these explanations start to screw up the pacing and it feels like the writer is stalling for time.Not only that, but the anime fully replays scenes from Gou like the audience all has short term memory loss and that messes up the pacing so much.Wanna know what's great about it though? The arc i enjoyed the least in Gou, had the most time dedicated to it in this season. And it's totally not boring, predictable,and a slap in the face of what I liked in the previous season. Not.At.All
  I will admitt the first couple of episodes were really good, it put a bit of a spin on Rena's arc that I thought made it more realistic and more brutal with the implications.The rest of this season takes away more and more tension.

  There are other aspects that do continue the story, but they make no sense with the context of Gou.And finally when the" sequel" part kicks in at the last two episodes, it was so stupid that it felt like a prank on fans of higurashi.

  I'm not kidding.The ending was just nuttier than a squirrels' used condom.And not in a good way.It almost impressed me how the finale was so over the top and contradicts the entire tone that made higurashi iconic in the first place.i can't even describe it.Just imagine The Shining,but at the end of the movie it turns into Avengers Endgame,Did you imagine it? Good, because it's even dumber when you see it in this anime.i enjoyed it a lot though, because it was just so silly and over the top, I had a dumbass smile on my face the whole time.It had references to the original and played as just a long round of Smash Bros with Higurashi locations.i could see an episode like that working better in an anime that wasn't…. y'know Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni,Did it make up for the other 13 episodes though? Lol no.

  Jokes aside,Its legitimately the worst feeling in the world to like something,get hyped for it,defend it,and then watch it turn to shit and feel so dumb for even liking it in the first place. I swear to Mother Mary that I don't hate everything, I just hate disappointment

  ART AND OTHER TECHNICAL CRAP. -_-

  Funny enough, the technical aspects of Sotsu are basically the same as what I said in my Gou review.(probably because this season is half recap) but I digress.The voice acting is still strong at least.the op was catchy...Thats all i got for ya. You want criticism?. Everytime the detective was smoking, the cgi smoke looked weird,but that doesnt matter, ppl are literally dying.

  CHARACTER "s"

  For Characters,I honestly didnt get too much more development for them outside of Gou. Most of them are just going crazy,then Satoko’s like “pew-pew” and the arc is over. The tension is just not there so when they try to replicate the brutal scenes from the original, it just doesn't have much effect outside of “ouch thats gotta hurt”.Point is, if you care about Rena, Keiichi, or Mion/Shion, just watch the og, it gives them more screen time. 90% of the scenes involving Rikka are just replayed scenes from Gou so no worries there. Lets talk about the true MVP, the deadliest sharp shooting sniper with over 2k confirmed no-scopes, Satoko Houjo.

  My favorite thing about Gou was the absolutely devastating relationship with her uncle, who ended up becoming redeemed after multiple time loops.While trying to make himself a better person, he tries to make amends with Satoko,but she couldn't fully bond with him after all of the trauma she has experience in the past loops.That episode in Gou destroyed me emotionally, i was on the verge of tears. But in this season, those tears were shed for nothing because Satoko straight up goes into full sociopath mode. Manipulating and gaslighting not only her uncle.but the entire village of Hinamizawa, and fucking with basically everyone.She doesnt even seem to grow close to her uncle, she sees him as just a pawn mostly to do what she needs to.I couldnt even enjoy them actually acting like a family,because the whole time i’m like “Satoko is lowkey manipulating you right now.”

  What truly frustrates me though, is that the actions she does almost contradicts her goal from Gou. Her end game basically was to live in a loop where her and Rikka can stay together forever , but this season,her actions just look like she is just causing trouble just for the sake of it.Her actions cause Rikka’s death many times,bringing her more and more trauma,and she legit says at one point that she's doing all of this to just make her suffer.There was this part in Sotsu that tries to explain the numerous time jumps is why she is acting so maliciously but when it happens, it doesn't make sense, isn't foreshadowed, and just doesn't get explained.Go figure.Even if i do go into detail, it just wouldn't make sense, its that messy.Its just a ripple of mess that makes me so confused, that i tone out.

  ENJOYMENT

  Idk if I have said this before, probably have, but I think the worst thing you can do to an audience is bore them. I stand by that. I think the score I'm giving to this is a technicality. Its the heavy lack of tension or intrigue that really did it for me. Right now, I'm struggling to find that much i enjoyed outside of episode 14/15.I don’t hate this anime, like others do. It's not deeply disappointing like TPN s2, nor was it so bad it made me hate-watch it like GOH or Kaifuckyou.I was just bored through a large majority of this show. The violence or whatever didnt really affect me since the story was messy,sure there's fanservice to the ones who liked OG higurashi,but the only moments that gave me any emotions were just scenes from Gou that were replayed.The ending was enjoyable to watch but for all of the wrong reasons, instead of praise for ep 14, people are straight up memeing on it. So I don't know man. I'm disappointed ofc, but Sotsu made me too exhausted to even be disappointed.
  Guess that's the anime community in a nutshell: memes, exhaustion, and disappointment.

  Seriously tho, if Satoko gets put in smash, I will rate this 10/10

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COMMENTS

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