English Dub Review: Higurashi – When They Cry: Sotsu “Demon-Revealing Chapter, Part 1”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
We see the beginning of the first arc of Gou, though this time through Rena’s perspective as she deals with her father being exploited by a gold digging call girl. Later, Satako injects her with the syringe that accelerates her Hinamizawa Syndrome, beginning her spiral into madness.

OUR TAKE
After a break, we return to what will hopefully be the final part of this strange and frustrating regurgitation of Higurashi. Sotsu has been advertised as shedding light on the remaining mysteries surrounding the Hinamizawa kids returning to their 1980’s time loop. Near the end of last season, we learned that it was one of their own, Satako Hojo, who was responsible for making everyone relive their earlier school days, all because she completely lost her mind over her friend Rika fitting in better at a private school they both went to. However, despite this being a series that is mainly known for resetting time back to a specific point, we are ACTUALLY going back to a PREVIOUS time loop to see it from a different angle. Last season started with Demon Deceiving Chapter, which was from Keiichi’s perspective and combined elements of two previous arcs from the original series, though was more focused on the arc that went through Keiichi’s eyes. Now we are focusing on Rena, so we are getting more emphasis on the arc this derives from that was about Rena, specifically the part about her going apeshit on her dad’s fake girlfriend.

And I might be jumping the gun a bit here, but I’m starting to think we were given some of these arcs out of order. As mentioned, we are well aware by now that the main culprit of all of this is Satako, and we even see as such with her directly causing Rena’s syndrome to go into overdrive with the sole goal of torturing Rika into submission (which we see down the road does not end up working). So aside from reminding us about Satako going full crazy bitch, I think this arc could have been placed at around Episode 14 of Gou without much issue, along with possibly the other arcs we’ll be getting that will give us slightly more insight on the arcs that came later. Because otherwise, unless this is going to give Rena her last chance in the spotlight to overcome a personal character arc, why are we wasting time on this and not continuing the story that was stopped dead in its tracks at Episode 17? Ya know, where Rika seemingly gave into Satako’s eternal torture only to finally out her as the mastermind and then Satako pulled a gun? It makes even less sense when you consider that this supposedly final season has only a little over half of Gou, meaning that we’re spending nine of these fifteen remaining episodes REHASHING SHIT WE ALL ALREADY KNOW. AGAIN. Oh boy, I can’t fucking wait.