English Dub Review: Higurashi: When They Cry – Gou “Village-Destroying Chapter, Part 6”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

In the other dimension, Satako continues her research to pressure Rika into not leaving the village, as well as finally getting a name for her horned mentor, Eua, who names herself based on Satako’s stammering. Eua observes that people in the loops seem to be subconsciously retaining memories of previous timelines, which seems to be influencing their decisions in future ones. As it turns out, Satako’s horrible uncle Teppei is one of them, as he remembers dying alone from his hoodlum activities and commits to being better, even defending Satako from some bullies and trying to make amends for his abuse. It’s clear he’s got a long way to go, but he seems to have changed for the better.

OUR TAKE

We’re into what I guess you could call some extra innings with this season. I mentioned last time that the previous episode felt like it could act as a competent season finale to send us off on, but oddly enough we seem to have two more episodes that are going to make the break feel just that much more awkward with the rest of the season. We’re probably going to get the actual “finale” next week if the rate that Funimation has been putting these out at continues with its current pace (mostly back to normal with a few hiccups), but for this week we get a little side story that may or may not set up some things to come for Higurashi Sotsu, but DEFINITELY ends up making some things EVEN WORSE than they were before. Longtime fans or even people who have only watched this season will know that Teppei Hojo is just the worst, being so horribly abusive towards Satako in previous timelines that he drove Keiichi and others to murder him to protect her. So, it’s a bit of a weird but somewhat pleasant surprise that he seems to be on the path towards realizing the error of his ways.

People in the loops remembering their erased actions as “dreams” is something that has been introduced before, particularly in the later arcs that saw characters learning from those mistakes and avoiding them to get to a brighter and happier ending. As shown, Keiichi remembered his murdering Rena and Mion in the very first arc, while others have also seen moments where they have been at their lowest which has helped them to commit to avoiding those fates. Teppei has been such a small player in events that him having the same sort of revelation is pretty unexpected, but it is an interesting development nonetheless. Everyone else was succumbing to the effects of the Hinamizawa Syndrome that took over their minds and ended up killing them, but Teppei was pretty much just acting on his own. Unfortunately, this has the possibly unintended implication of making Satako, the one now pulling the strings, look EVEN WORSE, as she is going through multiple loops herself and yet somehow not understanding how wrong her actions are. And Teppei’s not the only villain who’s going to get reformed and make this all feel weirder, as we’ll see in the season “finale” to Higuarshi Gou.