English Dub Review: Higurashi: When They Cry – Gou “Village-Destroying Chapter, Part 7”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

While observing the accumulative effects the loops are having on people’s behavior, including her uncle, Satako spends extra attention on Takano, who was previously the source of the horrible tragic endings that trapped Rika. Like with Teppei, Takano recalls previous failures and deaths as bad dreams that subconsciously push her to change her fate, eventually leading to her turning on the team of Spec Ops troops that planned to destroy the village. Satako seems to have accidently created a world stuck in time where everyone eventually learns from their mistakes and grows as people. But because it will eventually lead to Rika leaving her, she decides to steal one of the vials that completely turns someone with Hinamizawa Syndrome, meaning that she can choose any person in the village to turn into a crazed killer at any point, trapping Rika in an even more torturous loop that she will never escape until she bends to Satako’s will.

To be continued…?

OUR TAKE
Higurashi Gou finally reaches it’s finale…except it’s not really a finale, which is a first for this series. The first season of Higurashi managed to finish its sixth arc, while Higuarshi Kai, the second season, concluded what was the official end to the series up until now. Here it’s clear that this is just the end of the first half of this story arc, which will be picked up again next month with Higurashi Sotsu. Since this last arc has been mainly about explaining what led Satako down this dark path of wanting to torture her best friend for all eternity over a stupid misunderstanding. As I have probably made quite clear over the last few episodes, I haven’t really appreciated the series going out of its way to show us that the poor innocent abuse victim who missed her brother was actually an unstable, clingy, deranged, and horrible person who would be willing to lock her supposed friend what is essentially the temporal equivalent of a dungeon, all so that she gets her way. Not only that, we have this and last episode to show that she’s not only terrible, she’s worse than even THE WORST PEOPLE in this series.

Making such a radical and drastic of a change for a previously good character is certainly a bold move for a sequel to take, and not one that I am necessarily against on principal. The problem that I see is that the way that Satako is written is excessively brutal and, if the goal is to show how she could have been an intelligent and devious villain all along, it falls flat on its face. I’ve already spoken at length about how her reasons for going bad are immature and bratty at best. But you need look no further than this episode to find reasons why her plan is doomed to fail on multiple levels. She’s gone full god complex and now sees the fact that Rika’s supposed betrayal of her is actually a betrayal of Hinamizawa and their god Oyashiro, something Satako has never cared about before until now, when it can somewhat fit her delusion.

She’s also been told plainly by Eua (her Hanyuu stand-in who I guess we’ll get more info on next season, hopefully) that the longer that the villagers, including Rika, go through these loops, the more likely they’ll learn and change, but she has decided that these are all just dreams that she can forget about once she finds the right timeline where everyone will be happy together forever. In a moment practically glowing like a neon sign to come back to bite her later, she decides to ignore that her previously abusive uncle has made a miraculous shift in mindset and is slowly becoming a better person. No matter how many times she resets things and turns people crazy, these changes aren’t going to stop and it’s eventually going to collapse on her, either from Teppei or someone else. She also decided to make Rika remember the previous loops, which will only quicken this process, which seems to have led to Rika figuring this all out, as we saw at the end of the last arc.

So Satako is a shitty villain for the same reason that kept her struggling in that preppy school and led to this whole stupid situation: SHE DOESN’T STUDY. And on top of that, she’s a horrible friend who has struck at her Rika’s worst trauma as revenge for something that she had no control over or involvement in! Wow, I can’t wait to see how this chess match tries to keep building up Satako as some sort of Machiavellian genius while repeating this series’ greatest hits over and over but in a worse art style! And then I can’t wait for the show to forgive everything and have everyone be friends again instead of facing consequences. By which I mean, I am DREADING it, but also really looking forward to tearing it apart if given the chance. See you then, as well as the season review for Gou!