Well, I guess that with this, Higurashi finally comes to an end, and I have to say that the creators couldn’t have chosen a better way to close it off than with Rei. It really made excellent use of the OVA format to surpass itself, in terms of comedy and silliness in regards to episodes 1 and 5, and in terms of solid scriptwriting for episodes 2, 3 and 4. I’m really going to miss this series.
Anyway, I’m not going to write a review for this OVA, because I know from experience that I’m terrible at those kinds of reviews, especially if I don’t marathon them. What I do want to say though, is that everyone who finished the TV-series should really also give the OVA a chance. It’s one of the very few cases in which the OVA is as good as the series it’s based on.
Anyway, this episode closes off Higurashi with another silly chapter, in which Rena swallows a “Magatama” which makes her fall in love with whoever holds an identical “Magatama” in a different colour, which shows Rena spooning up to Tomitake, Takano, Oshii and eventually Keiichi through a hilarious episode. I liked it better than the first episode of Higurashi Rei, because even though it was very silly, it also showed a new side of Rena: the side of her that wants to be close to others, and so is very easy to adapt her hobbies to others.
This also leads to an awesome Mah-Jong match, and at that point you could really see that it was a wise decision to put the director of Shion no Ou on the director’s position, rather than Chiaki Kon. The Mah-jong match in this episode which probably only took up 5 minutes was more exciting and creative than anything I’ve seen in Saki for the past half five months. It really reminded me that there can be game-based series that don’t have to rely on god-mode powers and Deus ex Machina.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni – 55
I was never a big fan of Rei… The mystery and most of the suspense in Higurashi ended somewhere halfway through Kai, and that’s where the series should’ve ended imo.
But Higurashi isn’t just about mystery and suspense… it also features some great character development and IMO saikoroshi-hen did a great job at providing closure for that latter aspect. Even taking the usual and inevitable adaption decay TM into account the arc was done quite well in the OVA, especially the last episode. As for the comedy episodes… I have to admit that I didn’t even bother watching them since I’m not really into pure comedy, which is why I also prefer to skip through most of pre-matsuri events in the novel…
Funny that you should say “game series that don’t rely on god-like powers”… given the fact that Hanyuu was using her magic to see people’s hands. 😀
But I get what you were saying. It was a pretty great final episode!