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

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

In the final moments of the second season, Miyo Takano’s operation to wipe out Hinamizawa is thwarted, and she is taken into custody to be treated for her Hinamizawa syndrome. Rika and the rest of the gang celebrate their victory, all thanks to Hanyuu, who finally decided to become a real person in this timeline in order to help them. With things finally calmed down, Satako asks Rika if they can finally all be together and that she won’t let anything else come between them. Three guesses what happens next.

A year later, Rika has finally been able to move past the timeloop that kept her trapped in 1983, as she and Satako have grown up a little (with Satako’s Hinamizawa syndrome apparently being completely cured), Mion has graduated from the school, and Keiichi has taken over as the leader of their club. Also, Hanyuu is just gone and no one acknowledges that. Rika still has to practice her dance for the Watanagashi ritual dance, but decides to meet with Kimiyoshi and Oryou to publicly announce at the festival that the Three Great Families forgive anyone who participated in the Dam War, pretty much to dissuade any further animosity against the Hojos. However, this isn’t the only big change that Rika wishes to make, as she tells Satako about a private school in Okinomiya that she would like to attend with her.

OUR TAKE

Well, finally we have reached the actual sequel part of this sequel season, and it only took us until the last arc. Except it’s also kind of a flashback, as this all takes place BEFORE the time loop is reset, even if chronologically it takes place a year after the end of the second season, when the loop was originally stopped. As a fan of the first two seasons, finding out what happened after the end was certainly something I was curious about going into this season. The most we had gotten to see of that was the five part OVA series, Higurashi Rei, which felt more like a coda than building on those events. And this isn’t even the first time that this series has jumped ahead to see what the future might be like for certain characters, but the only time that’s actually been done is looking at the future of a doomed timeline where Rena was the only survivor and Hinamizawa was wiped out. Now we actually get to see everyone happily living their lives after they were able to get their best possible ending!

But naturally, if we know things end up falling back into the same old pattern, clearly there are things that aren’t quite working out, even if it isn’t clear what those things are just yet. We’ve got six more episodes, a whole quarter of the season, left to delve into that, so for now we can simply enjoy seeing the happy parts going on. Rika is obviously glad to not be stuck in a little girl body anymore, Satako has apparently cured her Hinamizawa syndrome, the village is slowly on the pathway to forgiving the Hojo family, and we continue to see things progress like they normally would. And yet, in probably the most Higurashi-like fashion we have seen all season, even the most happy things have a tinge of dread and doom in them that makes things feel a bit unsettling. Although that might also be because they aren’t acknowledging Hanyuu after the first scene, which is a bit odd considering she should just be a part of this world now, and there have apparently been no updates with Satoshi, Satako’s lost brother, who you would think would have some advancements in his own treatment so that he could be there for Satako. But I’m sure there is a logical reason to leave these two out, right?

…right?!