English Dub Review: Higurashi – When They Cry: Sotsu “Curse-Revealing Chapter, Part 1-2”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Rika awakens before the Curse Deceiving Chapter starts, confused about who may be responsible for putting her back in the time loop. Unknown to her, Satako has her next plan lined up. Once the timeline starts, Rika confides her frustration with “dreams” that are driving her crazy, to which Satako gaslights Rika by telling her that Oyashiro is punishing her. Satako then asks her uncle, who is still slowly reforming himself, to move back with her into their old house and begins playing him against the rest of the village, who are led to believe that he is abusing her, mainly because that’s what happened in all other versions of this scenario. Eua watches over this and comments that Satako is no longer human, but a witch.

OUR TAKE

Well, I kept on complaining about the last few episodes giving us mostly rehashed content, so the monkey’s paw curled one of his hairy fingers and started giving me episodes with all new scenes! Scenes that just make me more infuriated with Satako and her stupid petty childish and horrendous spiral into forced tragedy. Those are really the two flavors that Higurashi Sotsu pings between: Better moments from better seasons made worse OR relentless character assassination of Satako Hojo. So now that we’re done doing the first one with Rena and Mion, we’re now at an arc that stars Satako, and since she’s one of the baddies pulling the strings, we’re getting this from her point of view, which actually FINALLY gives us some new information about an arc for once! And it turns out that she’s faking being abused because her uncle has actually slowly become good! Basically, the thing that made it difficult for her to get saved by Child Welfare back when she WAS being abused is actually happening now. And all for the purpose of tormenting someone who she claims to be a friend to in order to keep her from going to a school that friend liked.

I commented on Teppei’s reform near the end of last season when it started coming into play and I still think it’s an interesting concept. He, like Takano, were among the most despicable people in the series during its original run, being emblematic of how tragic and complicated getting someone out of an abusive relationship is. There’s been some discussion and debate about whether he’s reforming for the right reasons or if he deserves to be forgiven for timelines that have now been erased. Personally, I think he’s showing himself to be doing good work towards turning a new leaf, it’s just unfortunate that it seems his niece is actually now even worse than he ever was, manipulating his and everyone else’s lives for her own petty goals, even resorting to rolling around in dirt in a perfectly memeable scene in order to make her friends think her uncle is hitting her and then make her uncle think the whole village is bullying her for the Dam War that’s a whole big thing in this show’s mythos. And it’s all just confounding and weird and upsetting and I want it to be over please. But this arc goes on for another three episodes so I guess we’ll just hang in there.