Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – 44

Okay, so Higurashi is still in checklist-mode, but it really has been getting better and better with every single episode. What I especially loved of this episode was how well-scripted the dialogue was. It was elaborate, detailed and yet meaningful, unlike you tend to see in other series, that basically sell off a lot of hot air when the characters start monologueing. Also, it seems like the Matsuribayashi will finally get started off for real in the next episode. Yay! And it was of course great to see more and more members of the old cast back into focus, and see Takano take more of a background-role. It was nice to see how the creators also used this opportunity to show some more TIPS, back from the first season, like how Rena used to be called Reina, and Keiichi’s father, meeting Rika and Hanyuu. I still would have liked to see Keiichi’s shooting-incident, though. Also, we finally see confirmed what happened to Satoshi. He killed his aunt, and then went berserk right in front of Irie. He was brought to the clinic, where he died and his body got taken care of by the Yamainu. Should have seen this one coming. What was cute was how he went berserk, only after buying the present for Satoko. It seems that Satoko never got the present, though. The end of the episode also features a surprising conversation between Mion and her grandmother. I’m not sure whether this all happened in every arc, or that this is because the characters unconsciously get closer to each other with every successive arc, but it was an interesting twist, although it does work a bit anticlimactic for the fifth arc.]]>