Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – 13 – Even More Questions

Too bad. Keiichi’s voice-acting so did not match with his facial constortions. He looked so fake in this. On the other hand, Satoko was awesome when she started yelling. About the episode: I liked it. It wasn’t as good as the previous two, though it was very enjoyable indeed.

The game, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni consisted of eight arcs, if I’m not wrong. Four question-arcs and four answer-arcs. Right now, we’re being treated with the four question arcs. We’ve only got one of them left, in which Rika will stand in the attention. This’ll probably take till episode seventeen. What follows are the four answer-arcs. I’m wondering whether the creators will decide to show all of them, or just two.

Anyway, about the episode. We start with Keiichi, lyin in his bed. He’s obviously extremely confused, after what happened in the previous episode. He then grabs a hand axe, and heads for Satoko’s place. When he heads out, he thinks he sees something behind him, though there’s nobody there. He himself thinks that it’s Satoko’s work.

He heads for Satoko’s house, and then notices that Satoko’s uncle’s bike isn’t there. The door is left open, and the tv is left on. Keiichi then searches for Satoko, and he hears something in the shower. It then seems that she’s been in the shower since the entire night, counting till 10000. When Keiichi asks for the reason, she mentions something about her uncle. Then Keiichi goes berserk in a few very fake scenes. That’s the problem when you’re low-budget. Scenes like these don’t work. Still, I have to say that Satoko was just too sad.

Keiichi then attempts to bring Satoko to the clinic. She’s getting better and better, one thing I liked about this. When Keiichi goes to investigate, he sees that Irie’s killed himself. Oishi’s also vanished without a trace. When Satoko hears this, she’s terribly shocked. Though, she manages to recover after this. These scenes were greatly excecuted. Satoko then asks Keiichi to bring her to Rika’s house, in order to borrow some clothes. Keiichi manages to get more paranoid by the minute, by the way. The fact remains that both Takano as Oishi as Irie died, after Keiichi wished thim dead. This makes him think that he’s the reason behind these deaths. He then also confesses Satoko about what he did to her uncle. Satoko tells him not to mention it, though the disease has spread enough for Keiichi to not notice it. Satoko then leaves, in order to pick up her stuff.

What follows is Keiichi, who notices Rika’s dead body behind the shrine. It’s being eaten by crows, so he screams in a very fake way, and attempts to chase the crows away with the axe he’s wielding. This axe then gets covered in blood. When Satoko sees Keiichi wielding a bloody axe right next to Rika’s dead body, she breaks. She then runs away and Keiichi follows her. They end up at a bridge narrow drawbridge.

Satoko mentions that she used to see Keiichi as her new Nii-nii. Keiichi tries to convince Satoko, but this doesn’t really work, since the idiot forgot to throw his axe away. When he finally realizes this, Satoko calms down a bit. Though, she still thinks that he murdered Keiichi. She gives Oyashiro the blame, as she knows that Keiichi wouldn’t hurt anyone.

She then tells about something that happened when she was young. She used to play along with Rika, and then she ended up inside the shrine on accident. While trying to get out, she broke Oyashiro0s statue, though Rika was seen as the one who did it and punished severely. This has made a huge impact on Satoko, especially her parents disappearing, her aunt dying and her brother running away only strenghtened this. She now views those as a devine retribution for the things she did back in the shrine. This was a great moment, though I’m wondering something… what the heck was a chibified-Keiichi doing right next to Rika? And why the heck did they look of the same age? O_o

Satoko then tells Keiichi that she really was glad that Keiichi got transferred, and now she breaks when she finds out that the only hope she had left has als obeen posessed by Oyashiro. She then pushes him off the bridge, and he falls a loooong way down in the river which lies behind the bridge. What follows is the usual conclusion of the arc. In the first arc, this was Oishi who read the report about the things Keiichi had been doing. In the second arc, it was Keiichi who recovered along with Rena after what happened in Mion’s basement. The third arc shows a couple of unknown people, watching the local news about something that happened in Hinamizawa. Guess what? Poisonous vulcanic gass erupted from somewhere, killing off the entire Hinamizawa Population. Except for one person: Keiichi.

Did you see that one coming? Keiichi, ending up as the only survivor of Hinamizawa? It makes perfect sense, though. A fall from a bridge like that hurts a lot, though you don’t nessecarily die from it. Because Keiichi was unconcious at the time when the gas erupted, so he didn’t breathe in as much as the other residents of Hinamizawa. That’s why he stayed alive.

So, let’s take a look at the total death count:
Keiichi: 1,5 (We don’t know if he really died at the end of the second arc. It was probably the disease again, though he could have killed himself at that time. Only time will tell).
Rena: 2
Mion: 3
Shion: 2
Rika: 2
Satoko: 2

Isn’t this interesting? If it turns out that Keiichi didn’t die at the end of the second arc, he’s been the main character with the least number of deaths on his name. You might wonder whose body it was which appeared at the beginning of this arc. It’s simple. It’s Satoshi. It seems that Mion somehow ran into him after he killed his aunt, and gave him some treatmens he didn’t really like. It seems that Satoshi indeed had every intention to run away, though Mion had other plans.

The best thing about this episode is probably the huge amount of questions it managed to introduce. It seems that there’s so much more than just the disease which is claiming its victims. Poisonous gas roams around, people are killing each other, people are disappearing, and all these events have been influenced by the things that Keiichi did, with the only exception of Tomitake and Takano’s deaths.

For example, what caused Irie’s death? Was he so much in love with Satoko that he couldn’t bear it and committed suicide? Or does it have something to do with his part as a director? And how did Oishi disappear? Are their deaths linked in some way? Ddi they both have something to do with Satoko? Or could Oishi have been the one to set the vulcanic gas free? After all, this all happened two days after the Watanagashi. In the first arc, Keiichi was busy fleeing from Rena and Mion at that time, while in the second arc, Keiichi was having strange phone calls with Shion.

Another thing that remains a mystery is the following: what happened to Satoko’s uncle? There are two possiblilties: Keiichi did kill the guy, though Satoko’s disease imagines that he’s still with her, or Keiichi never killed the guy, and he suddenly went out on his scooter, leaving the tv on. Both of these theories have got their holes.

Also, what happened to Mion and Rena? Weren’t they supposed to go on a treasure hunt? What happened afterwards? What did they find? Or were they the ones who set off the vulcanic gas? And why did Mion kill Satoshi in the first place (I’m assuming now that she’s the only one who can perform the Watanagashi). And who was the one who killed Rika? And why? Why did the murderer put Rika in such an obvious place?

Rika was just too sad in this episode. She’s an incredibly strong character, as she manages to recover fastly after what happened to her in the shower. She also gets shocked when she hears that Irie’s dead, though she behaves normally afterwards. Though when she realizes that Keiichi has been posessed by Oyashiro, she breaks. It seems that when he transferred, she clinged to him, and she turned him into her raison d’être. When such a thing betrayed her, she broke.

Differences with previous arcs:
– The vulcanic gas never escaped in the previous episodes.
– In the first arc, Keiichi wanted to flee. In the second arc, Keiichi wanted to understand. In the third arc, Keiichi wanted to protect.
– Keiichi isn’t going to move.
– It’s the first time Oishi disappears.
– We see the drawbridge for the first time in the third arc.
– Mion and Rena didn’t attempt to cure Keiichi from his disease, like they did in the first arc. In fact, their part in this arc was very small.
– For the first time, Keiichi wields an axe, instead of a bat.
– The second arc is so far the only arc in which Keiichi actually got help. It seemed like Mion would be helping Keiichi during this arc, though she gets out of the picture after the second episode.
– Each arc also focuses around one side-character. In the first arc, this was Oishi. In the second, this was Shion, and the third had Irie.
– In the first arc, Rika stays alive. In the second arc, she commits suicide. In the third arc, she gets killed.

Another thing I’m curious about is Rena. And more importantly her behavior in the first episode of the third arc. At that time, it was clear that she was under the disease. Though it stopped there. The Watanagashi-murders were mentioned, and she went berserk. Though after this episode, these never were mentioned again. It’s like she got cured. Why and how did she get cured?