English Dub Review: Higurashi – When They Cry: Sotsu “Demon-Revealing Chapter, Part 3”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Rena’s madness consumers her, leading her attempt killing Keiichi but getting killed herself instead. Grief stricken by this, Rika kills herself to reset the timeline with Satako following shortly.

OUR TAKE

In case you somehow didn’t read the last two reviews, we reach the end of this exercise in repetition by finally seeing the rest of the parts we already knew from the first time we did this arc months ago. Over eight months ago to be exact, where we saw all of this happen for Keiichi in Gou. It should be pretty obvious by now, but Higurashi is meant to be a mystery show. Even the point of these remix arcs for Gou are for the (alleged) purpose of having eagle eyed fans check for differences and piece together what that could mean in the end. I cannot for the life of me figure out what the purpose of doing this arc again from Rena’s perspective is, so I guess that’s the real mystery here. I could think of ways it COULD have been used to show us new information, though. We learned late last season that all of the club member kids have actually had a few years to grow up a little have lives we haven’t seen while Rika and Satako were going to their weird prep school, Rena being one of them. So you’d think, maybe, that using her point of view would give us a chance to look in her head and maybe see flashes of what she’s been up to?

Because again, not to put too fine a point on it, but Satako has dragged all of her friends and classmates back into a distorted version of their past in order to torture Rika until she relents to Satako’s wish for things to stay in the past forever. But the fact remains that all of them have multiple years post-Hinamizawa that do not line up with the timelines they’ve been getting thrown into. And if, say, a final season of a show about characters who are constantly forced to relive the past had this last chance to focus on each individual characters in their own specific arcs, PERHAPS this could be an opportunity to see how far Rena has come and what she’s learned, not only through the multiple different timelines we’ve already seen her in, but also in the life she’s had that we haven’t had a chance to look at. Maybe? Wouldn’t that be more interesting than just repeating shit over and over and over and over and over?

…no? Well, okay, as long as we’re clear, I guess.