PinkuBentoBox

I want to preface this entry by clarifying my position on ‘anime blogging’. Personally I see next to zero merit in writing entries about each episode I watch, summarising what happens and adding a crapload of screenshots. I just don’t see the point. If I’ve already seen the episode then I probably don’t need to read a summary of the episode. Conversely, if I haven’t seen the episode then I’m not going to read your summary because I’d prefer to watch it myself. I’d prefer to be getting some actual information - opinions, theories, etc, rather than just reading a picture-ridden summary. I guess this means that I don’t quite align with the rest of the anime ‘blogosphere’ or whatever Web 2.0 term they’ve come up with now. Whatever.

Some time back I wrote a crackbrained entry about the first two arcs of Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni. I’m actually a bit behind in this now - I have 16 and 17 (the first two episodes of the first ‘answer’ arc) stashed, but haven’t watched them yet. Primarily this is because of a lack of spare time over the past few weeks. My spare time has gone to the two traces you will see below this entry (if you’re looking at this in chronological order), a little bit of anime, and doing my part of Mirror Moon / Revolve’s Tsukihime beta. I’m not going to talk about the beta here though, beyond saying that they’ve done an excellent job, and the release isn’t very far off.

So anyway, Higurashi arcs 3 and 4. For those unfamiliar, Higurashi’s original story is delivered via 8 separate games. Essentially, the first four are referred to as ‘question’ arcs, and the last four as ‘answer’ arcs. Onikakushii-hen (arc 1) and Watanagashi-hen (arc 2) are more scene-setters and question raisers. By the end of arc 3 (Tatarigoroshi-hen) we are supposed to have our theories, and arc 4 (Hamatsubushi) is supposed to help clarify and crystallise those theories into solid hypotheses. Arcs 5-7 will reveal answers to our questions, and arc 8 is apparently an epilogue (the game still has not been released, as far as I know, and will definitely not be animated).

At least, that’s the theory. At the end of the penultimate episode of Tatarigoroshi-hen, I was pretty sure I’d hit on the perfect theory (Keiichi is batshit insane and ‘Oyashiro-sama’ is a figment of his own imagination which affected his judgement and perceptions) however the final episode threw a good chunk of the evidence I’d based the theory off in a bit of a spin, and ultimately invalidated it. Himatsubushi-hen made it pretty clear that I was completely wrong.

This left me in a bit of a quandry, as it means that I don’t really have a theory now. Anyway, let’s examine a few things now that we’ve had all the questions laid on the table. First up, why were the first two question arcs disconnected from everything else?

Himatsubushi-hen is clearly the backstory (and a little epilogue) to Tatarigoroshi-hen. This means that 7 episodes were spent on it, compared to 4 for the other two, indicating that it’s the most important of the arcs. To me this indicates that the plotline delivered in 3 and 4 is the ‘true’ story arc, and the first two were merely designed to set the scene and the characters, as well as show us what might happen if things don’t proceed to their ultimate conclusion, thereby giving us clues as to what elements are important.

Himatsubushi-hen gave us some clarification in this respect. Rika predicts the string of deaths that lead up to the end of arc 3, telling us that it’s been planned out. She then asks us who’s plan it is. I think that identifying this is the most important thing, and will turn out to be the key to unravelling the whole mystery surrounding Hinamizawa. If Tatarigoroshi-hen shows their plan coming to fruition, and Onikakushii-hen and Watanagashi-hen show it going awry, then it stands to reason that if we look at what goes ‘wrong’ in 1 and 2 and also examine commonality between the three, we may be able to come up with, at the very least, a list of suspects.

When Rika asked us who’s plan it was, my first thought was of Mion and Shion’s evil grandmother. However I think we can probably discard this outright. Primarily, we don’t know if she’s even still alive later on. The fact tthat Mion appears to be in control of the Sonozaki family in arcs 1-3 would indicate she may not be. Of course this doesn’t preclude the possibility of everyone following through with her plans after she’s died, however the way Rika’s question was phrased seemed to indicate it would be someone we were more familiar with. In that case, it should be someone that is in all four question arcs.

I want to make it clear at this point that I do not believe that the plan has been made by the nebulous ‘Oyashiro-sama’. However I do want to make an observation on that, specifically that we’re told that Rika is Oyashiro-sama’s reincarnation. Figuring out what Oyashiro-sama is is going to be an important key to everything, but I don’t think we’ve got enough evidence to figure it out yet. We’ve seen ‘him’ several times - Rena, Mion and Rika when they do their freaky split-personality dealie. If Oyashiro is Rika, then why does Rika end up dead in the ’successful’ scenario? However, if we take this a little further and speculate that Rena was Oyashiro in Onikakushii-hen, and Mion in Watanagashi-hen, then we also observe that Oyashiro ‘dies’ in these arcs too. Probably, at least - we’re still not sure if Mion and Shion didn’t swap over in Watanagashi-hen. If not, we know from the opening scene that Rika ends up dead in that arc too. Or maybe they’re both incarnations of Oyashiro. Or maybe neither. We simply don’t have enough evidence either way to make final judgements on this issue.

Actually, a side observation there - Rika killed herself in that arc. It could be that she realised that Mion was going to break the ‘plan’ and end up killing Keiichi. Perhaps Rika killed herself in order to try and force the plan back into alignment? In the plan, Rika ends up dead, along with the rest of the village (including Mion) and Keiichi survives. Given that at that point Mion wanted to apply nails to Keiichi’s fingers and rip out his guts, it’s possible that Rika thought that by killing herself she’d somehow save Keiichi. Mion’s laughing at it may indicate she knows about the plan as well, and is laughing because Rika’s sacrifice is ultimately futile. This is complete speculation, though. We’ll need to wait for arc 6 (answer 2) to find out.

Which characters, then, might be behind the ‘plan’? We know that Rika isn’t predicting the future, she tells us that it’s all been planned out. Given that, it must be a character who common to all four arcs. There are only three options here that I can think of - Rika, Mion, and Oishi. Rika doesn’t seem to be a fit based off her actions in Himatsubushi-hen. Mion doesn’t seem to be the type to plot to this degree, and especially not plot her own death. Oishi, however, has always seemed not quite right, as if he always knows things that other people don’t. He’s very suspicious as well. We know from Tatarigoroshi-hen that it’s possible that the power behind things at Hinamizawa may not necessarily be from Hinamizawa. It’s also worth noting that, given that he’s not a Hinamizawa resident, he doesn’t end up dying at the end of Tatarigoroshi-hen. In Onikakushii-hen he is constantly manipulating Keiichi, eventually leading to his death. The evidence that Keiichi left him conveniently disappears, and the rest of the deaths up to there are conveniently left ‘unsolved’. Note that he’s the detective who investigates *all* the Watanagashi deaths / disappearances. He’s also around to ‘investigate’ Mion and Shion in arc 2, and eventually close that case, laying the blame at Mion’s feet. That whole arc’s ending is a little wierd, though. He also appears in the right places in Tatarigoroshi-hen - he seemed to somehow know exactly where Keiichi had buried Satoko’s uncle, despite him not being there (clearly moved by Mion and Rena, the ‘treasure’ they went off to dig for). He also seemed suspicious in Himatsubushi-hen. To me it seems quite likely that Oishi is behind everything. If not, then he is definitely involved in a big way.

There are still some things we don’t know, though. Takano is extremely odd in the first three arcs - it seems to me that she probably kills off Tomitake each time, then kills herself or is ‘removed’ by some other party, in perpetuation of the Watanagashi tradition. She’s probably just a pawn in the great scheme of things, though she’s creepy as hell and very suspicious.

Also, we still don’t know much about Oyashiro-sama and how he plays into events. Additionally, there was the whole walking dead thing going on in Watanagashi-hen. We have a lot of the pieces of the puzzle now, and we have a good idea of what the shape of the puzzle is. What we need now is some clues that will allow us to attach the puzzle pieces together with confidence. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll be seeing Arc 7 either, since the current TV guides list Arc 6 as spanning 6 episodes.