Well, if anyone happens to be interested, here's the full review I did back in 2011. Very spoiler heavy, just to warn you.
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (When They Cry) &
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai
(50 episode series)
This is an exceptionally well put together series, which approached the story from many different angles and kept me hooked from start to finish. That’s actually why I’m including both the first and second seasons together in this review, because it’s only together that they make a complete story. That’s what makes it that much more unfortunate that the second season apparently wasn’t picked up for a dub like the first season was. The story was just as good even if I had to read subtitles, but to be honest I’d gotten used to the dub cast, and some elements just weren’t as effective in my opinion as in the dub because what’s said has to be filtered through emotionless subtitles.
Moving on, as much praise as I’m giving this series, I’m going to say right up front that it’s hardly perfect either, though its flaws aren’t anywhere near being a deal-breaker, at least for me. While the story itself is actually made up of repeating time loops in which are main characters each tend to do things a bit differently and things tend not to end well for them, I can’t help but feel that there was also something of an anime within an anime here. While I liked the main anime, which was a murder mystery/psychological thriller, with plenty of drama thrown in, I didn’t much care for the anime within it, which was the kind of typical, cutesy, moe, slice-of-life anime I just don’t like. As the main character who serves as the primary protagonist for the first season, Keiichi Maebara is also the only male character among the other main characters, who also form an after-school club in their small, one-room school located in the village of Hinamizawa. This has all the makings of a harem anime, and to be honest the anime within the anime seemed to pretty much be that. The character designs kind of added to this, and was somewhat disarming to the horrible murders that take place in this series, while simultaneously making it somewhat amusing for that fact, just like
Elfen Lied. I feel that the cutesy slice-of-life bits distracted from the story somewhat, but while I would have done it differently, I completely understand why this aspect of the story was done – so we’d care about the characters.
Since the story is pretty much TNG’s
Cause and Effect or
Groundhog Day with a murder mystery, it’s pretty important that the audience gets to know and care about the characters, otherwise, there is no point to watching them die and/or kill over and over again other than as gore porn. That’s what I feel is a major failing of the vast majority of most horror films, because it isn’t so much about the characters (who are usually too stupid to live anyway) as it is about seeing the horrible way they meet their end. Gore porn, in other words. With
Higurashi, however, we learn a lot about the characters and their village each time the story makes its way through the fateful events of June 1983. Sure, it’s a bit over the top that each of the characters has some kind of a past shame that makes them kind of scary in some ways, and that the village has such a sorted history as well, but this is also what makes the story interesting. I also have to admit that this is where the moe slice-of-life bits actually help to add to being able to care about the characters, as we get to see them when times are good, and it makes it that much more tragic when things got to hell. Often it involves one of the friends losing it completely, betraying, and killing all of their friends.
The first season doesn’t really explain all that much. Actually this is where one of the more annoying flaws of the series stands out, because information we already learned as the audience tends to be constantly repeated. I’m cool with the way information was slowly learned with each new time loop, and in fact I actually liked that and the pacing it set, but I really hated hearing the same information repeated. It was better when the story changed to focus on other main characters, though. I also liked how each new time loop started with a vision of the horrible ending it would have, with everything then adding up to what we saw it start out with. The thing is, it becomes apparent very quickly that more is going on, involving a conspiracy of some kind with parties unknown committing some of the gruesome murders in Hinamizawa valley. At first we’re lead to believe that people in the village itself are responsible, but much like having Keiichi act as the protagonist for the first season, this is somewhat misleading.
The season ends with Rena Ryugu, one of Keiichi’s friends going psycho and killing a couple of people, who to be fair were conning her father for basically most of what he had. Her friends help her to hide the body, but eventually she gets paranoid and takes her entire school hostage, apparently intending to kill all of them using a gasoline bomb. Keiichi manages to talk her out of it, however, and the next season starts from here, only about 25 years later, with Hinamizawa being the abandoned site of a disaster that had apparently killed everyone but her, and which we see happen more than once with a different main character as the sole survivor each time. At the start of season 2, this is Rena. We also get the first really obvious clue that what’s going on here was definitely an external conspiracy.
While season 1 was the build up, season 2 is the climax, finally explaining all the mysteries. To begin with, as it turns out there actually is a Bill Murray character who technically then would be the true protagonist of the entire thing, though here she’s only the protagonist of the second season. Kind of surprising considering that in the first season we only got a few hints she knew more than she was letting on.
Meet Bill Murray, aka Rika Furude.
Rika is the shrine maiden for the local deity, Oyashiro, a supposedly wrathful and vengeful god who has been said to be killing and disappearing people every year for going on the fifth year. This naturally isn’t actually the case, and as it turns out, Oyashiro is actually Hanyū, a meek spirit who was apparently an ancestor of Rika’s who was sacrificed to bring peace to the village, and who originally set the rules meant to keep the local disease or parasite from spreading further or getting out of control. She has been watching everything go down, though she is unable to do anything but watch, and it is because she wants the village to avoid being destroyed that she brings Rika back to some prior point in history after Rika is killed in June of 1983. Apparently this has added up to over a century of time, and the two of them have become somewhat jaded for that reason. Fortunately, and somewhat conveniently, other main characters start to remember events from previous time loops, and are able to fight their fate.
Along the way, we learn more and more about what is going on, who is involved, and what role they play. For the most part, the pacing is perfect, though at one point we go back and see how one character apparently became the monster that they are in 1983, and I felt the story dwelled a bit too long on that part. Seeing the conspiracy that was first hinted in the first time loop come together was definitely interesting and important to the story, however, especially when it becomes apparent that the event that kills the entire village is not the tragic natural disaster it was initially thought to be by authorities.
The final time loop and climax to the story is a fairly good payoff. The only disappointment in my opinion is the lack of any real punishment to the main big bad of the series, who is responsible not only for the massacre of the entire village in previous time loops, but for the butchery of Rika in order to set that massacre in motion, and for other murders which occurred prior to June 1983 and are not undone by Rika and her friends. Actually, one of the people she consistently killed in each time loop and tried to kill in the last one ends up being sympathetic toward her and lets her cry into his shoulder. How disgusting. Yes, the point of this last time loop was that there weren’t supposed to be any losers, but it’s also a little too perfect that not even any of the bad guys wind up dead in what was supposed to be a life and death battle. The final battle was kind of lame that way, because it consisted of a bunch of kids setting non-lethal traps for people who were instructed to kill all of them on sight and were armed to do so. But, the end was still pretty satisfying when everything that had been building up came together in the end and the grisly fate of Hinamizawa was finally avoided.
As far as other weaknesses, for the most part they’re nitpicks. Things like Mion and Shion Sonozaki packing a revolver and no one noticing or mentioning it, and never actually using it when it would have made sense to do so, or Hanyū showing up in physical form for the last time loop, but still having horns, only no one seems to notice and never get mentioned. The thing I personally hated and found to be the biggest flaw, however, was the sexualizing of the younger girls, and taking this further by having an adult character have a sexual attraction to one of these girls (we’re talking grade school age) and playing up his pedophilia as being funny and a joke. Fortunately this doesn’t come up very often, or it might have effected my ability to enjoy the show. The other major weakness of note is the ending. Basically it suggests that an adult Rika or Hanyū has gone back in time and has successfully managed to keep the major event that leads to the big bad becoming the big bad from happening. That actually kind of ruins things considering everything the story has gone through, and the way the characters fought so hard for their happy ending. Not to mention that it doesn’t make much sense in how the series established the time loops happened to begin with.
That being said, I can’t recommend this series enough for you to watch, especially if you’re interested in murder mysteries and psychological thrillers. However, be warned that many of the murder scenes are somewhat gruesome, and if the thought of cute little moe characters going crazy and killing people disturbs you, you might want to pass on this series instead. If that doesn’t bother you or you otherwise think you can handle it, definitely watch this series. Just skip the last season and don’t bother with the live action movie. 8/10.
