PinkuBentoBox

So, I thought I’d actually write some content for once. Some of you
will have been following Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni this season. For
those that aren’t, it’s a great series, though freaky. I’m enjoying it
greatly, especially because of its unique non-linear style - at the
end of each 4-episode arc, everything ‘resets’ and does a ‘what if
this had happened instead?’. I suggest that you go and watch episodes
1-8 now, then come back, otherwise this entry will be chock-full of
spoilers. You have been warned. Also, I am not responsible if this
show makes you terrified of cute little girls.

(Side note: I recommend Triad for episodes 1-4 and then WinD for 5-8)

With that aside, what the hell is going on in Hinamizawa? I’ve got a
bit of a theory going on here that takes into account only the first
two arcs (episodes 1-8) and nothing else. While there have been seven
games of a planned eight (I’m told the structure is 4 ‘question’ arcs
and 4 ‘answer’ arcs) there are those out there who have a pretty good
idea of what’s up. I am not one of them - I’ve avoided any discussions
of the games. Primarily because the idea of bonking Rena is
nightmarish.

Having only had two arcs, at this stage there are some gaping holes in
our story’s canvas which we will need to have filled in before we can
really pull an all-reaching hypothesis together. That doesn’t mean we
can’t come up with theories for the stuff we do have enough
information to speculate with. I will dispense my personal theories
henceforth.

Arc two (Watanagashi) gave us a much better understanding of the
town’s history, including the whole ‘demon blood’ thing. A town full
of half-demon cannibals and all that seems kind of far-fetched though.
Folklore tends to be exaggerations of the truth. I actually think the
whole torture device collection and all that was merely a means of
contextualising Mion’s actions.

My personal opinion is that there is no real ‘demon’ in the spiritual
sense. That said, I don’t think that there will be a logical, rational
explanation for what we’ve seen so far. However I thought this about
Boogiepop Phantom as well, and was kind of wrong on that count. So a
scientific explanation is not out of the question, I just don’t think
that there will be one based off the cards we’ve been dealt in the
series so far.

By now it’s quite obvious that Mion appears to be a sort of lynchpin
in this setting, with Rena and probably Rika and Satoko involved in
some capacity. Those last two are speculative however, as Rena and
Mion are the only ones we *know* exhibit the signs of being
‘possessed’ by ‘Oyashiro-sama’ (I should clarify that I am assuming
that the ‘Demon’ Mion talked of in Watanagashi is the same as Rena’s
‘Oyashiro-sama’ from Onikakushi)

Some people have noted that Onikakushi was far more disturbing than
Watanagashi. No one seems to have pointed out that until the last 5 or
so minutes of Watanagashi, none of the girls (even Mion) did that
whole demon-eyes number, something that both Rena and Mion pulled out
many times in Onikakushi (and made me afraid of sleeping in case the
lolis came and ate me). I personally think that the Demon-eye thing is
intended to be an important visual cue for us - when the girls do it,
we know that they are being controlled by Oyashiro-sama. This is
reinforced in Onikakushi by the way that the girls behave either
side of their little outbursts, especially Rena’s “I’m sorry” over and
over. They’re not in control of themselves.

In Watanagashi, Mion, even at her most deranged when about to drive
nails through Keiichi’s fingers, was not exhibiting the telltale snake
eyes which are assumed to be Oyashiro-sama possession markers. However
she was going around murdering people and torturing her sister and
Keiichi. Assuming that they didn’t intend her to have the eyes going
in the hillariously low-budget ladder-shaking scene, we can assume
that while Oyashiro-sama was directing a lot of Mion’s actions, she
was somehow maintaining some level of control herself. Quite likely
this is because she actually really liked Keiichi, as we saw towards
the end of the arc.

From Onikakushi we know that Oyashiro-sama can be posessing multiple
people at once, as we saw it with Rena and Mion at the same time at
the end of that arc. Given this, it is not too much of a stretch to
assume that he can ‘infect’ and influence people somehow.

This is an important connection, because it gives us a means to
explain everything that we’ve seen so far in some capacity (except one
important thing which I’ll get to in a moment). It seems fair to
assume that Oyashiro-sama’s influence is something that builds up,
otherwise we’d be seeing a lot more signs of it in everyone rather
than just specific people. It quite likely starts at the stage where
it is simply just a slight suggestion, and then builds to a strong
compulsion (eg the townsfolk banding together to help Keiichi) and in
extreme cases, total possession.

What I’ve been leading up to is a small leap, but it feels a lot like
it fits given the stuff I’ve just gone over. Oyashiro-sama is
affecting not just the townsfolk, but Keiichi himself. Probably Tomitake
in Onikakushi as well. At what point in each arc he gains control
over Keiichi I can’t really say, but we can assume that by the end of
each arc, Oyashiro has gained a significant amount of control over
Keiichi’s mind.

At the end of Onikakushi, Keiichi was in the phone booth, talking to
Oishi. He tells Oishi that Oyashiro-sama is right behind him, however
we can see that there is no one there. We are then informed that
Keiichi subsequently clawed his own throat out. I’m willing to bet
that if we’d been seeing things from Kei’s perspective, we’d have seen
someone (Rena? Mion?) jump up behind him and tear his throat out. In
other words, Oyashiro-sama had taken control over Keiichi and caused
him to kill himself. Continuing this to Watanagashi, we saw Rika
stabbing herself in the head while Mion laughed like a lunatic over
it. We never actually saw the reality of this scene though. I actually
think if we’d seen it from Rika’s perspective, we’d have seen Mion
stabbing her. In the same way, Mion (or Shion?) appearing at the end
of Oni-kakushii to stab nails into Keiichi’s fingers was likely Kei
doing that to himself under Oyashiro’s influence. This is the
explanation for the ‘walking dead’ deal. It’s also quite possible that
Mion/Shion stabbing him with the kitchen knife was also him doing it
to himself, explaining why Oishi seemed a little bemused at the
suggestion that it was Mion that did it. Both Mion and Shion were dead
and he’d seen both bodies. This would also explain why someone knew
about the syringe and the note behind the clock - they knew because
Oyashiro-sama had been watching through Keiichi’s eyes. Alternatively
of course it could have been that Shion knew about Mion’s syringe and
when she didn’t find it in Keiichi’s room she searched for it.

Some people have been speculating that Shion and Mion were swapping
around a lot, and that it was Shion that was the evil psycho killer
and Mion that was in the dungeon. This actually seems quite possible
to me, but I’m not sure about it, or even if it really matters. It’s
pretty obvious that whichever of them it was, the one in the Dungeon
was killed and chucked into the well and then the other took her
place. Why then did ‘Shion’ kill herself at the end? Probably she was
no longer of any use to Oyashiro-sama, since she’d been found out.

There are three major things we simply don’t know about or that this
theory doesn’t really cover. Firstly, what is Oyashiro-sama? The
obvious - that he’s some kind of demon in the town’s lineage as
they’ve been saying - seems to be far too convenient for my liking.
There must be something more to it, probably which invalidates parts
of my theory. I don’t think it can be attributed to something base
like simple Shizophrenia, either.

The second issue is how people have been ‘infected’ or ‘possessed’. Is
this where the syringe came into play? Did Mion/Shion inject Keiichi
with some kind of Oyashiro-drug? Something that made him susceptible
to Oyashiro’s influence? Seems quite possbile to me. On the other
hand, they said there were no unknown substances in his blood, which
could mean that it’s a giant red herring. Someone suggested to me that
it was a syringe with Oyashiro’s blood in it, but the substance was
clear. Also this doesn’t explain Watanagashi at all.

The other major issue is that, while we can explain away Mion/Shion’s
appearance hiding under Kei’s bed despite being DEAD, we can’t explain
why Takano could be walking around when she died earlier, without
making some large leaps in our logic.

I guess we’ll have to see how the next arc turns out.