English Dub Review: Higurashi: When They Cry – Gou “Cotton-Deceiving Chapter, Part 1”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

It’s June 1983. Keiichi Maebara wakes to go play games with his friends at a local shop, though he finds himself being the only one to not win his match, so he decides to resort to bribery. He and the girls all get dolls as prizes, but at the behest of Rika, Keiichi decides to give his doll to Mion, even though he had probably expected to give it to Rena. Later, he visits a local sexy maid café with his dad, only to find Mion working as a waitress! Or rather, this is Mion’s twin sister Shion, who seems to be much nice and lady like than Mion. He initially doesn’t buy that she’s a twin, but decides to go along with it. Eventually he starts seeing Shion more often, with her even making him a meal after a weird day at school. He even gets saved by her when he accidentally angers some thugs, as she pulls a bunch of locals out of the woodwork to help him scare them off. But soon enough it’s time for Watanagashi, the Cotton Drifting Festival in Hinamizawa.

OUR TAKE

We begin the next arc in this reboot/sequel and it looks to be a redo like the last one, though this time of a Mion-focused arc. As hinted last time, this introduces Mion’s twin sister, who is clearly quite similar to Mion but different in a lot of ways, and of course they do the twin shenanigans stuff you would expect when you know someone with your exact same face. And like with the start of last time, this episode is meant to establish the normal world that will eventually be torn down by the horrible goings on. This happens at the start of each new arc as the pieces are reset and then deal with whatever awful thing happens in this iteration of events. But also just like with the last arc, I’m not really sure how to approach talking about this since it seems to be straddling the line between being for existing fans AND newcomers. Though since I danced around things last time, this time I’m going to be totally honest! And the honest answer is that this episode, and very likely the rest of this arc, are very weirdly paced, especially compared to the first season takes on these arcs which new how to make every episode ratchet up the tension while this really drags its feet.

But I do think it’s worth pointing out that there is a key difference to events here between versions. In the original take on this arc, Keiichi gives his doll to Rena, thinking she’d appreciated something girly more than Mion, where here he gives it to Mion at Rika’s request. Again, not sure how much I can give away here, but he basically just dodged a huge bullet by that simple gift exchange. At least, that’s probably what Rika, the only one who can clearly remember things from those previous seasons, would like to think. If it were that simple, we probably wouldn’t have a whole new season. And yet, as we are learning and will continue to learn, the more things change in Hinamizawa, the more they stay the same. What that basically means is that we’ll be doing more of the compare and contrast game here throughout the next three episodes that make up this arc and how they compare to its original version. What? I haven’t mentioned Satako this whole time? Ah well, I’m sure she isn’t that important to anything going on this time, so she’ll likely be in the background and not worth bringing up for awhile.