English Dub Review: Higurashi – When They Cry: Sotsu “Curse-Revealing Chapter, Part 5”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

With the “battle” to save Satako from her uncle seemingly resolved, Satako lures Keiichi to her house in order to beat him with her brother’s bat. Oiishi arrives, now at the final stage of Hinamizawa syndrome, so Satako sends him to massacre the villagers he thinks are responsible for the murders. He ends up killing Rika, Mion, and Shion before Satako gets there and puts him down and then kills her self to restart the timeline. Elsewhere, Eua gloats about her triumph over Hanyu.

OUR TAKE

And that wraps up the “Curse Deceiving/Revealing” portion of the series FINALLY. It’s taken a collective TWENTY FOUR EPISODES to get through these three past arcs and then regurgitate them up all over again, and that was after they were already reheated leftovers of previous arcs that were better executed by Studio DEEN of all people. I’m not even sure we’re done looking at previous episodes through different vantage points yet, but I hope that it’s shown by now how these sequel seasons have been completely and utterly mishandled on just about every level. And even when they want to flip the script and turn the viewers’ expectations on their heads, it seems they’re even changing important details on the fly just for the sake of a twist. You all saw the start of this episode where Satako finished murdering her uncle (and then proceeded to shower off the blood which was CLEARLY SOMETHING THE AUDIENCE NEEDED TO SEE, I GUESS). Well, if you remember the last episode of the Gou version of this arc, you’ll know that it ended with Keiichi being attacked by Teppei, not Satako, and then fighting back until they both fell over in blood puddles.

I was honestly prepared for Teppei to still somehow be alive but driven mad by something Satako did in order to attack Keiichi, but no, he is very much definitely dead. We do see that footage from Gou again…but it’s in a lie about what happened to Oiishi, who is barely sane enough to hear what she’s saying at that point. So what the hell did we see in the Gou version? Was that from Keiichi’s own delusions? Or the brain damage from the bat? Or him remembering a different timeline just then? And if the twist is that what we saw then was actually Satako’s lie, HOW THE HELL WERE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT? This is not the same sort of big reveal as showing what Shion was up to in the Eye Opening arc that changed the entire narrative, this completely new information that directly contradicts what we saw occur. When a mystery needs to do that in order to keep someone’s attention, it’s not a mystery anymore, it’s just a bunch of random shit that happens to put off boredom and cause more confusion. I want that point to be very clear as we enter the final four episodes and the final arc of the season.