Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai: Complete (rewatch... kind of)
"I don't have time to teach you how to operate a Kalashnikov" Edition
Okay, so my memory isn't totally shot. I remember Hanyū (she of
best character song and horns everyone is remarkably nonplussed by) and I remember that banging OP, which while not as creepy as the first is more of a hype song for the impending fight against fate, a feeling it evokes admirably (
also that change at the end from episode 14 on is masterful in how for the first half of the show Rika appears to be knowingly breaking the fourth wall and acknowledging the audience, only for it to be revealed she could see something we couldn't, but now can, that being Hanyū, which is just brilliant on multiple levels). However I did fail to remember much of anything else (other than vaguely the Satoshi storyline) which made for a nice surprise.
Compared to the first series, Kai does feel a lot like "The Rika Furude Show" but that's in no way a bad thing since it's entirely necessary to see things from her point of view in order to get a grip on what the hell is actually going on. Plus all the other main characters kind of got their own arcs already. While it's a little disappointing that the horror takes a backseat this time around as the show becomes a more concerned with unravelling the mysteries of the first series, in doing so it basically turns into a better X-Files storyline than most of the later seasons of the X-Files. And everything does make sense by the end, I think. Not sure about the epilogue,
it seems like the now time travel capable Rika encourages Takano to get on the same bus with her parents that they die on, and the driver still has a heart attack and crashes the bus just the same, but they all inexplicably survive. Wut? Was Rika trying to save her or kill her? I guess by Higurashi logic changes in the timeline can and do happen for seemingly no reason at all (like how sometimes Shion is in Hinamizawa and sometimes she isn't) but unless I'm missing something here surely showing them not getting on the bus would have made more sense? Perhaps all will be revealed in a later instalment I haven't gotten around to yet, or perhaps not.
Speaking of Takano, I think she's a great example of how to write a tragic villain properly. She has understandable reasons for being the way she is, but she isn't reduced to being someone you're supposed to forgive for all her (pretty terrible) sins out of sympathy.
I also noticed this time that there's quite a pleasing anti-establishment streak to Higurashi. The town's fight against the government to stop a dam from wiping them off the map, the gang fighting the useless bureaucracy of social services to help Satoko or Ōishi and the other good cops risking their lives and careers to do what's right rather than just keeping their heads down; the idea of "Tokyo" (both figuratively and literally, it feels heavily implied) attempting to impose their will on the rural inhabitants of Hinamizawa and play games with their lives, yet finding themselves being fought at each turn by kids, cops, doctors,
local kami and even yakuza granny, the spirit of people coming together to take on the man (and when they do they can win) seems to run right through the show. It's true it doesn't shy away from some of the less pleasant aspects of small town life (the Hōjō family's ostracization particularly) but it's hard after all this not to fall at least a bit in love with the people of Hinamizawa and the rural idyll they will come together to defend, bloodstained curses and all.
