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

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

As Rika tries to get her bearings, she and Satako enter the next loop, where Satako manipulates her uncle to get a gun and later infects Mion to further her torment of Rika.

OUR TAKE

Oh good, we’ve escaped one dead horse only to enter the anus of another one. Well, at the very least, I can say that this episode actually provided some new information instead of simply redoing worse versions of better plots, because this time is pretty much entirely from Satako’s perspective and what she was doing during this time. Unfortunately, all the stuff she was doing just reminds us all the more that she is a terrible person, even across different timelines. Her uncle Teppei’s slow rehabilitation that we saw begin last season comes back into play, but only in a way that shows that she is clearly not above using people who made the mistake of giving a shit about her in order to get her way. And yeah, to be fair, she’s got memories of Teppei treating her and her brother terribly, so this isn’t coming from nowhere, but as far as he knows, he’s just trying to make amends and she’s using him as a tool to continue torturing Rika AND all of her other friends. So, on the whole, I would say that this qualifies as a really shitty thing to do regardless of Teppei’s history of abuse.

And it’s not like she’s only using him, as she’s apparently gotten training from Mion on how to use the gun she got from Teppei’s old acquaintance. A gun that she will only use to make everyone’s lives worse. But this will not be the end of Mion being made to suffer here, as we will soon see. As stated here, Mion has actually managed to avoid being overcome by Hinamizawa Syndrome in previous iterations of the timeline, unlike all of her friends, seemingly through circumstance or having unnatural resolve for her age. Well, Satako decided to break that record and actually make her the one who breaks this time, seemingly showing that it’s her who goes crazy here, not Shion as it was in the better version of this story. So, points for originality, I guess. Not that they’ll be holding onto those points for very long since, as we’ll soon see, this is not a scenario that is going to have positive outcomes for anyone involved, even Satako. So, once again we’re dealing with going over this moment in time that we’ve already seen just to learn even more terrible things that don’t add to the plot or mystery but basically only serve to make our lead antagonist look even more terrible. The OP hints at her being found out for her crimes, but that can’t get here fast enough.