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

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Enraged at how traumatized Satako is from Teppei’s abuse, Keiichi and friends begin to get desperate in options to save her. Shion even becomes deadset on just killing Teppei, but Keiichi talks her down, somewhat remembering a previous timeline where he did just that and knowing it only led to tragedy. They instead try to visit the social services building, though it soon becomes clear that the workers don’t seem to care that much about Satako’s situation. So, Keiichi rallies the other kids at the school to visit the building in even greater numbers, showing Rika that there may be hope after all.

OUR TAKE

And so we go from remaking the Satako question arc to remaking the answer arc. In the first season of the show, the main turning point for this plotline is Keiichi (or sometimes someone else) seeing Satako in this abused state and seeing no other solution other than killing Teppei, mirroring how Satoshi also saw no way other than killing their aunt the year before, which would likewise end in tragedy. However, in the second season, where we got to see the answer version of this arc, the cast have more or less started to “learn” from previous goes at this and taken the more civil approach: peaceful protest in front of a government building! From what I can tell, the key thematic difference between these two outcomes mainly comes down to the bad ending having one person try to take on the issue alone and the good ending being a whole community coming together.

I guess where I kinda question the approach here is that this is still just sort of retreading old ground, if only with a few changes here and there to imply or hint at major things down the road. This method made sense for the first arc of this season, since it was reintroducing the audience to the horrors and paranoia of the original seasons. But then the Mion/Shion arc only really sees more from Keiichi’s perspective, leaving out the crucial things learned from Shion’s side, and now this current arc is leaving out some major things from Rika’s perspective. As one learns going through those first two seasons, Keiichi is mainly used as the eyes for these initial arcs because he’s usually an optimistic everyman who we then see warped by the tragedy unfolding around him. It’s when the story switches to the perspectives of one of the other main characters in the follow up arcs that we get a better picture of things, but we haven’t gotten that in this season since Rika first checked in with Hanyuu in Episode 2.

We will be getting back to Rika’s side of things in a couple episodes, so it’s not like we’ll be without it for long, but I have to wonder the productiveness of trying to cover this story again through these means. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that the last season aired over ten years ago, but it still means that we’re watching what is essentially an inferior remake of those seasons smooshed into a quarter of the runtime. And it while I do see what this was meant for later, it won’t be the last time I question how they execute that. But things are staying positive in this arc for a little longer, so hopefully so will I.