Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – 19 – And The Second Arc Is Solved

Okay. So Rena has a machete, Mion has a gun, Keiichi has a bat, and Shion appears to have an electrifier. In any case, Shion really freaked out during this episode, it seems that the disease finally got to her. Still, this episode explained so many things about the second arc. I think that every problem which only appeared during that arc and that arc alone is solved this way. Except for one thing: Rika. How did she know what Shion was doing and why did she stab herself to death? In any case, I’ll talk about this later. First, the summary.

We start with where we left off during the previous episode. The phone rings, and Mion picks up, still holding Shion. The caller remains unknown, though he informs her about something. Mion then tells him to silence everyone and hangs up. Mion then tells Shion that Tomitake and Takano have died. Takano was found stuffed in a barrel somewhere in a far away mountain, apparently burned. Tomitake used his own hands to tear away his throat. Still, I still think that Takano killed him, and stuffed him away in her car. Then, she dumped him somewhere and somehow found the need to drive to a faraway mountain. In there, something happened to her in which she ended up in that barrel, burned.

Mion then blames Oyashiro-sama, in a very serious look. Then, Shion electrifies her, along with Obaba. Then the OP rolls, and we get to see the same scene we saw at the beginning of episode 16. Mion then gets stuffed in the underground prison. Shion then questions her a bit, and Mion starts acting like her normal self again. She’s obviously surprised at Shion’s actions.

Mion then tells Shion that she doesn’t know what happened to Tomitake and Takano. I’m not sure if she’s lying or not. Shion then asks whether the string of murders, otherwise known as Oyashiro’s curse, really had the purpose as the Distinction for the Dam War. Mion considers it a possibility, though she neither confirms nor denies. Still, I don’t think that that’s the reason. After all, why did Rika and her family have to die?

Mion also reveals an interesting fact. Despite the fact that she’s the next head, she doesn’t have any power at all. She only acts as a spokesperson for Obaba. Obaba still decides everything. Mion also believes that there’s another person than herself who’ll be inheriting her true position. This is quite an interesting piece of information. Mion isn’t as powerful as we thought she was.

Mion then really gets surprised when she finds out that Tomitake and Takano have violated the festival shrine. The way she reacted couldn’t have been a lie, I think. She also then considers it natural that because the two of them entered the shrine, they were bound to be killed. However, Mion does mention the fact that there were four people who snuck in. Nobody could’ve told her that. It’s either basic reasoning, or she could be hiding something as well.

Shion then gets upset when she finds out that Mion’s suggesting that Shion is going to disappear and heads for Obaba. She appears to have died, which is only logical. After all, old woman -> delicate body -> dies easily. Especially from such a shock. Shion, however, isn’t happy with it, and starts to edit Obaba’s face with a whip. In the usual badly animated way. It didn’t work really well. Shion then hears some footsteps, suggesting at the same presence she felt before, and the same presence Keiichi felt when he set off to kill Satoko’s uncle.

Shion then returns to Mion, to question her about the location of the infamous well from the second arc. It’s where the corpses are dropped when the torture has finished. She also shows Obaba’s dead body. Quite a shock for Mion. Mion then suspects that the reason for Shion’s acting is Satoshi, which is quite accurate. Shion then explains to her that it was the fact that Obaba lied to her about letting Satoshi go which made her act the way she did.

Later, Kimiyoshi, or the village elder, seems to give a phone call to the Sonozaki-residence. Shion picks up, pretending to be Mion. At five O’clock, there would be an emergency-meeting by the village council, and Obaba had to attend. Shion then tells him that Obaba isn’t feeling too well, and that she’ll be coming in her place. She hangs up. Kimiyoshi, meanwhile, heads for his proctologist for an unpleasant meeting.

Kasai then phones. Shion then tells Kasai about that she snuck in the shrine during the festival, along with Tomitake, Takano and Keiichi. Kasai then finds it very hard to stay on Shion’s side. It seems that entering the festival shrine seems to be a far worse crime than she thought. Then, Shion plans her next step. It seems that she wants to find out who Oyashiro-sama actually is, and she’s planning to use Keiichi as bait for this.

The next day, Shion decides to talk to Keiichi personally. It was amusing to see Keiichi’s attempts at lying from a third person. ^^

Shion gets pissed off when she finds out that Mion asked him the exact same thing during the night of the Watanagashi. We saw it during the second arc. Shion leaves, Rika jumps on Keiichi and Mion starts asking a couple of suspicious questions. In any case, Shion intended to do this in order to seed Keiichi with doubt and fear of his surroundings.

Shion then heads, still dressed up as Mion, for the festival shrine for the town council meeting. The village elder speaks first, with a looooong greeting. Then the subject of the Watanagashi-murders gets brought up, and the air gets a lot tenser. The village elder then asks Shion whether Obaba has mentioned anything, and then Shion shows that she can act at times. Still, she definitely gets nervous.

Shion talks about the fact that the curse occurred yet again because someone entered the festival shrine. Surprisingly, this is new to the town council. Of course, it isn’t sure that everyone of them didn’t know about it, as it’s very easy not to get noticed during this, but I’m believing for now that the entire town council didn’t know about it.

The reactions of the members of the town council are far worse than I imagined. It seems that it’s really a heavy taboo if you enter the festival shrine. Even the town elder screams to curse them. Shion then reasons that the person who connects Obaba with Oyashiro, and the one who’ll inherit Obaba’s position are present in the room. Still, I don’t get her arguments…

Then, when Shion starts to talk about Keiichi and herself as the ones who have violated the shrine, everyone suddenly turns emotionless. She then tells that Shion has already been taken care of, while Keiichi still runs free. Then we turn to the end of the meeting, where Shion invites the village elder to come to her house. Se tells him that Obaba wants to speak to him, concerning Shion.

The village elder then, however seems to show sympathy for Shion. Shion’s happy to learn that he’s on her side. That is, until he starts talking about Satoshi. As Satoshi’s parents tried to sold the village out, Satoshi didn’t deserve to be forgiven. Then he tells Shion something interesting. It seems that she never repented for Satoshi in the first place. It wasn’t as I predicted. The fact that guards had to cut off her third fingernail still was enough to repent for the third person, though that person isn’t Satoshi. It’s Shion herself. Satoshi never was mentioned in this.

As predictable, Shion then loses it, probably with the disease helping her a bit. She starts cursing the three houses, and she electrifies the village elder as well.

Okay, the second arc explained (at least, I hope. With a bit of help from Memento’s summaries):
The first episode basically covered Keiichi realizing that Mion and Shion were twins. In the beginning, he thought that Mion just was making things up, though he proved to be quite wrong (*interesting note: both Mion’s as Shion’s part time jobs were never mentioned again after this arc. Strange*). At first, I thought that both of them were in love with Keiichi, though I was wrong. Mion’s in love with Keiichi, and during episode 5, Shion was just teasing Mion, by making her moves on Keiichi. Keiichi only reminded Shion of Satoshi when he patted her on the head. Something he didn’t do during the second arc.

Then the second episode. During Rika’s performance, Shion takes Keiichi to the festival shrine. Takano had invited her to come along, and she thought that she might get some clues about why Satoshi went missing. She was too scared to go alone, though she figured that when she was with Keiichi, she’d be okay.

After the visit, Tomitake and Takano head for the river shore, Shion leaves after she wonders what the banging sound was. Now it seems that it’s the one she’s searching for. Quite possibly, it’s all happening in her head, because of the disease. Rena, Mion, Satoko and Rika run into Keiichi. Mion then decides to take Keiichi to the riverbank, while the others head for other directions. When the two are alone, Mion gets creepy and asks if he met Shion that night. If Mion really didn’t know that the two of them have entered the shrine, then I think that she saw Shion take Keiichi and leave. She didn’t decide to go after them. As she’s in love with Keiichi, she probably thought that Keiichi and Shion were planning to do some naughty things deep in the forest. That’s why she turned so gloomy at that point. She couldn’t take that Keiichi didn’t have eyes for her.

The next day, Keiichi runs into Mion again. At least, that’s what he thinks. The night before, Shion went berserk, killed Obaba and locked Mion away. Then we get to see the scene we saw during this episode, in which Shion drops some suspicious hints regarding the festival shrine. This also explains why she suddenly knew that Keiichi entered the shrine: because she’s been there herself. This is probably the thing that triggers Keiichi’s disease.

Then we turn to that evening. Shion has just killed the village elder, and she decides to continue to use Keiichi as bait. Therefore, she makes him meet up with Oishi. Oishi then wonders if Shion is Shion or Mion, and Shion excuses herself. I think that, from Shion’s perspective, we’ll indeed see her get nervous like that during the next episode. In any case, Oishi tells Keiichi about the status of the Sonozaki-family.

That evening, Shion calls again, in an attempt to put even more fear into Keiichi. She tells him about the deaths of Tomitake and Takano, and the fact that two deaths require two people demoned away. Keiichi then really begins to lose it, and Mion has her mission accomplished. The way we saw it at the end of the sixth episode, it seemed like Shion had lost her hope in Keiichi, so she hang up. In reality, she was probably smirking with a satisfying smile.

Okay, next up is the third episode. In class, people are talking about the village elder. He left a meeting, being held in a shrine (the Furude-shrine) and disappeared afterwards. Now we know that Shion indeed killed the guy.

Then, the only unexplainable thing in this arc happens: Rika. I like how everything is kept mysterious about her. I also realize that I left out one very important detail about this conversation: when Keiichi saw Rika, she looked beaten up, and she was crying. For some reason, Rika knows about Keiichi who entered the Shrine, and she starts her cryptic conversation.

I do have a theory, though. The fact remains that Shion hates the three main families, for their hate towards Satoshi. I’m positive that she’s planning to dispose of them. That’s the reason she wanted to kill Rika, but not Satoko or Rena: because Rika’s a member of one of the three main houses.

Now, what if Shion, dressed up as Mion paid Rika a little visit, right before Keiichi saw her? What if Shion hit Rika on the ground, and told her about Keiichi? What if that was meant as some kind of warning? Not only would this be extremely sad, this would fit perfectly in the story. Shion has already proved to be quite dangerous, so I really can see her attack the poor Rika. Afterwards, Rika decided to give Keiichi a couple of cryptic hints, after which she went to Shion, and stabbed herself to death. I really can’t think of any way why she would do such a thing.

Okay, next up: Shion calls again. She tries to bring more and more fear into Keiichi, by mentioning the village elder. She puts up an act, in which she tells Keiichi that she told the guy that she snuck into the shrine, while in fact, she killed the guy at that time. This makes Keiichi suddenly get worried about Rika. I think that this was all planned by Shion. She actually went to Rika, in order to warn her, so that she’d talk to Keiichi. Then, al she had to do was kill Rika and make Keiichi believe it was because of the curse.

In any case, Keiichi calls Rena, who begins to play for detective. Shion then steps in her Mion-role and the three head for Rika’s house. Shion then finds a ladder, and Rena goes to the main house of the Furude-family in order to get somebody with a key. Meanwhile, the topic of conversation gets brought to Satoshi again and, not surprisingly, Shion loses it again and lets the disease take over again like she always does when the guy gets mentioned.

Then Rena arrives with the key, and they head inside the house. Shion then plays even more with Keiichi’s mind, when she tells him that Rika disappeared because of Oyashiro-sama. It’s quite effective, though Rena comforts Keiichi.

Then we turn to the next morning, with Keiichi and Rena again. Rena mentions the fact that Mion had troubles waking up, though I think Shion was on the verge of losing it when Rena contacted her, so she decided not to respond, and make it seem like she disappeared. Then, Rena comes with her surprisingly accurate theory. Another reason why I’m really wanting this arc to end. I’m really looking forward to see Rena in the spotlights again. She’s got a really interesting character.

Anyway, Oishi then runs into the two of them. He wants to have a little talk to Keiichi, so Rena leaves. Oishi then tells him about the village elder, who went to visit a proctology clinic and got involved in a traffic accident afterwards. Keiichi then realizes that Shion was the one who killed the guy. I never EVER thought, at that point, that Keiichi could actually be RIGHT in his reasoning…

Oishi also mentions that he knows that Keiichi, Shion, Tomitake and Takano have snuck into the festival storehouse, because of some rumours which have been floating around. That’s quite logical, as it was Shion herself who spread them. Oishi then reveals that Shion’s been missing. This too, is quite logical as Shion has been continuing to pretend to be Mion, in order to not get too suspicious. I guess, that in order to do that, she had to disappear herself. Oishi then tries to search to a nonexistent link between something that Tomitake, Takano and Shion did do, while Keiichi, the only survivor, didn’t. It seems that he’s on the wrong tracks on this one.

That evening, Shion decides to call again. At this point, I think that something happened, which made her quite unsure, and which was the reason for her to pretend to oversleep. She sounded quite desperate at that point, and most definitely not aware from the fact that Keiichi heard that she’s actually missing. I think that at this point, she’s really beginning to break down. This is only strengthened when Keiichi comes with the fact that he knows that she killed the village elder. That definitely was something she didn’t plan for. After all, she didn’t know about the village elder’s proctological problems. More proof that she went crazy follows as she starts calling in a really scary and maniacal way.

Finally, episode 4. It starts with Keiichi confessing to Rena. It seems that she also figured out about what went on. Her detective skills earlier indeed showed that she’s able to easily figure out such a thing. Especially if countless of rumours are floating around. The two of them decide to go to Mion. Then Oishi runs into them, and Rena finds out that Oishi plans to use Keiichi as bait, in order to get permission to search the Sonozaki residence. Keiichi’s often used as bait, isn’t he?

In any case, the two of them reach the house and Shion opens. Keiichi apologizes and Shion acts like she doesn’t care. She doesn’t want to blow her cover after all. Then, Rena mentions Rika’s death, and more especially, Satoko’s death. Like I said before, Shion wanted to kill Rika. She never wanted to do anything to Satoko, though she came along anyway. Satoko then found out about Shion’s complot (probably by seeing a dead body somewhere) so Shion was forced to kill her as well. Shion doesn’t like the fact that Rena found out about this, no doubt she feels very cornered. The then tells a bit about the history of Hinamizawa-village. Shion also mentions the three bikers from the fifth episode. When I first saw this, I thought that it was Mion who worked at the restaurant. In the end, it seems I was wrong.

Shion then mentions the demon carved in her body, and it actually seems that she was the one with the tattoo, not the other way around. You’d wonder how she got it. I’m suspecting that it’s something she got in her youth. Remember that she told about the harsh way she was treated in the sixteenth episode? Also, Shion believes that there’s a demon in her body, though I think that that’s just the disease. Remember, during episode 17 when Shion mentions that the demon inside her was born? It was just Shion who convinced herself that she was acting weird. She had to blame something, so she blamed the demon, not aware of the disease.

Shion then confesses that she was either directly, or indirectly involved with each of the Watanagshi-murders. This is just a lie. Shion answers how she thinks Mion would have answered. She thinks that Mion was involved with each of the murders, so it’s quite logically that she’d say such a thing.

Then, Shion asks Rena to have thirty minutes alone with Keiichi. Shion holds Keiichi’s hand a bit, and then tells him that she actually loved him. Probably because he reminded her of Satoshi. Keiichi then replies with the message that Mion will always one of his best friends, no matter what happens. Quite funny, if you consider that he’s talking to Shion.

Shion then takes Keiichi to Mion. It seems that she performed quite some gruesome tortures on Mion, which turned her insane. I guess that in the end, the only thing of Mion which remained was her love for Keiichi. That’s why she was so incredibly glad to see him, and freaked out when she saw Shion. What follows is Shion dropping a large stone on top of Keiichi’s head and tying him up on some kind of torturing device.

When Keiichi wakes up, Shion tells Keiichi the story that Mion was supposed to be freaking out after Keiichi gave the doll to Rena. That’s very nice. But it’s all a lie. Keiichi then asks three things of Shion: forgive Shion, give Mion’s body back and let him go. He adds the last one when Shion wonders why he doesn’t care for himself at all. It now becomes logical when Shin claims that she can’t forgive herself. And giving Mion’s body back also is a bit impossible, as it was never taken over in the first place. It’s also interesting that right before Shion tries to drive the first nail into Keiichi’s finger, she hesitates a bit. Keiichi still reminded her too much of Satoshi. (On a side-note: don’t you find it ironic that Shion chose the same torture that Satoshi had to endure for Keiichi?)

Then, Shion hears the police, and she’s forced to stop. She electrifies Keiichi as well, hides in the well and then kills herself. Probably because of the dead bodies. I guess we’ll know this reason in two episodes. The next day, Keiichi begins seeing things because of the disease, and then he stabs himself. Mion, meanwhile has really lost it and jumped from the top floor of the hospital.

While reading back at my older posts, it seems that I forgot one important detail, which got mentioned at the end of the eight episode, and which messes up everything: Takano actually died before the Watanagashi. This means that Takano either grabbed another body, and made it look like she was the one who died, someone pretended to be Takano, or something’s really messed up here… O_o

This means that Mion really didn’t commit any of the murders in the second arc. Still, I don’t think she’s totally innocent when it comes to the main story. After all, she did get into a fight with Oishi. She did freak out during the third episode of the first arc. She did get into a fight with the first Watanagashi-victim.

I also realized something, for the first time this episode. Shion may be actually on the trail of catching the real criminal. The real criminal may be the one who’ll really be the successor of Obaba. With a bit of luck, this person actually was the one to spread the disease, commit the Watanagashi-murders, get involved with Tomitake and Takano’s death, killed Rika, disposed of Oishi and let the volcanic gas escape. Okay, there may be different persons behind all of these events, but somehow I’m feeling that there’s only one person. I have no idea who it is, but the only things I know for sure is:
– The person is a member of one of the three great houses. Otherwise, this person wouldn’t have been able to succeed Obaba.
– The person is on good terms with Rika. I think that that’s the only way to explain the fourth arc.

I think that at one point, Shion’s going to give up on her mission of making Keiichi the victim, in order to lure out Keiichi. I think that at one point, she realizes that Oyashiro-sama’s curse is just a legend, brought to life because of some coincidences. Every year, one person went missing while one person died. During the fifth year, this had to be adjusted when two people died, in order to make the curse sound right again. Of course, the balance was bound to be disrupted when Shion went on and killed four other people.

Overall, whoa… this really is my largest post EVER, aside from the montly summaries, perhaps. The second arc suddenly became clear after this episode, though one fact remains. I hate Shion. She remains such an annoying character. Ah well, it only has me longing for the sixth arc more and more. And let’s hope for an additional OVA containing the final two arcs of Higurashi. ^_^