Now that I found out about the premisse of the show, a lot of questions are suddenly answered. What we have here, is a story, that keeps repeating over the same timeline, though each time, the characters take different actions, which lead to different results, and in the end, different people getting killed.
While the last arc was focused on Keiichi and Rena, it seems that this arc will be focused on Keiichi and Mion. It also seems that Rika, the blue-haired girl, will play some kind of role, as we see her killing herself in the preview of this arc. I’m not too happy about the creators showing this. It spoils a bit too much, in my opinion, and it takes away a bit of the power of the scene.
I’m wondering if there’ll also be arcs at which Keiichi won’t be the one to play the role of main-character. It’d give some interesting perspective, but then again, I think that each of the other characters has her own mystery, so that idea also has some backfires.
Anyway, this episode, we are introduced to another character: Shion, Mion’s younger twin sister. This also explains the two mions next to each other in the still amazing OP. Both of them have total different personalities, and it seems that in this arc, both of them have fallen in love with Keiichi. I had a good time watching Keiichi, who originally believed that Mion and Shion were the same person, suddenly became aware that there were two of them.
I also had to get used to the fact that Rena’ll probably play a small role in this arc, so there’ll be no paranoia attacks from her for a while, in huge contrast to the previous arcs. We also get our first small part of information about Rika: she may look cute, but in fact, she’s really strong. Keiichi may not like this in future episodes.
This episode was, with ease, the quietest one of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni yet, though I think that each beginning of an arc will be like this. I wonder what the Watanagashi will bring us this time. (Interesting note the only total similarity with the previous arc so far was Rika abandoning the club-meeting to practice for her role at that time).
I kind of like the previews, they make me wonder what makes the characters come to that end.
Hmm, true, though I think the creators could’ve shown it a bit more cryptical. Right now, we know that Rika’s going to kill herself, and Mion or Shion’s going to laugh. I’d have preferred to see only a couple of flashes of what was going on.
It is a bit more clear than the equivalent in the previous scenario, but maybe the producers decided that we already know who the characters are anyway so they don’t need to make it hard to discern.
Now that I read that, it makes more sense…
Here I was wondering why Higurashi had suddenly become Futakoi.