English Dub Review: Higurashi: When They Cry – Gou “Demon-Deceiving Chapter, Part 3”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The next day after the festival, Keiichi meets with detective Oishi, who informs him that Tomitake and Takano have been killed, as well as how their sudden deaths matches a trend that occurs every year of someone being found dead and another going missing. On top of that, Oishi later calls and also tells him about how Rena had an incident at her old school that got her suspended, leading her to come to Hinamizawa. Unfortunately, when Keiichi’s father comes up with snacks for him, he tells Keiichi that Rena had come by to check on him, likely meaning she heard the whole phone call about her.

OUR TAKE

Tension continue to builds as Keiichi learns more concerning details about both his town and his friends, along with the body count beginning with Tomitake’s death. But the only things that really stand out about this to me as someone who has seen the original season is that all of the events of THIS episode took place in the second episode of the four part arc, not the third. I feel like I should avoid more spoiler heavy comparisons until next time when the arc finishes, but it is a bit of a concern when this episode now has two episodes worth of content left to get to now that they only have one. That said, the purpose of making things feel even more tense is certainly served, with the fabric of Keiichi’s reality starting to crumble around him as he begins to suspect those who he originally trusted dearly. This is a recurring theme throughout Higurashi, especially in the early arcs, with characters being driven to extremes by sudden but drastic shifts in their status quos, often coming from darkness from their own past but also an innate terror about the horror around them.

Unfortunately, that’s also about as much as I can say for now without going into great detail before we get to the end of the arc. One might say that’s one of the issues with having four episodes with this arc and that it could mess with the pacing. Maybe it’s nostalgia, but I remember the original version of this handling that pacing pretty well, though as I said, they were further along in their version of the story by the end of their third episode than this one, and as we’ll soon see, it would probably make more sense for things to move a bit faster through the events rather than slower. Not to mention that, at this point in the story, Keiichi is more of an audience surrogate to feel through about how terrifying things are happening. We’re getting a sense for him as a character certainly, but not as much as we will in later arcs. And yeah, I’m not a fan of having to be this vague about things right now, but the state of things as a sequel or reboot is still up in the air right now so I just feel like I need to adhere to that…for now.