This Week in Anime

Is Higurashi Gou as Terrifying as the Original?

Nicky
Yeah, Nothing like watching a nice normal school slice-of-life anime to escape from life's stresses about a boy in a town so Podunk he has no choice but to get into brawls with elementary-schoolers.

That's certainly the juiciest piñata I've ever seen. I guess you can also say Higurashi doesn't actually waste anytime and starts things right off-the-bat!

Today, we'll be covering the NEW adaption of the beloved visual novel, Higurashi When They Cry or Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. A horror-mystery written by a dude with the moniker of Ryukishi07, that's already spun itself into many other forms of media even having been adapted into two seasons prior by Studio Deen. Higurashi NEW, is an interesting beast because although it's technically a reboot, it's definitely got enough differences for both new and old fans to enjoy.

I'm actually not exactly primed myself, I had been meaning to get into the old series for a while but a long visual novel or fifty episodes of anime seem pretty daunting in comparison to much shorter more recent works. Most of what I'm pulling for this article will be other people's word or the couple episodes from this introduction arc that I DID watch from the original in preparation for this. Watching the OLD and NEW series back-to-back was interesting though and doing so definitely added a lot of texture to the way events fold in NEW.

If it weren't for the cold open the first couple minutes of this would basically just be any other 00s school-comedy anime, and that's 100% the intent and points in Higurashi's favor. The sweet halcyon days nestled between the unsettling moments of nothing where the only thing you feel is the sound of cicadas and your own anxiety building.

Yeah, this new one tries to get a little more of the light-hearted fair in the mix to try and get you to endear to the characters more but again, without the gruesomeness there's not much that separates them from characters you get in other anime. Despite the original anime taking the same amount of episodes to cover the first arc, the escalation of events in the new one is bother faster and slower. Though, I'll admit, trying to dig out a trashed statue of Colonel Sanders for your moe girl school friend is hilarious.

Keiichi is a new-comer to a small town, Hinamizawa. His family moved to the backwoods from Tokyo, in school he actually seems to be adjusting pretty well despite the fact that the school is so small there's only one classroom for all the kids in town. He already seems to be close with several members of the town including his friend Rena, the bossy Mion, the small Rika and bratty Satoko. They spend their days playing games and pulling pranks on each-other but being a new-comer, it doesn't stop Keiichi from feeling the creeping sensation of alienation, the dark secrets of the town that he as a new comer, isn't supposed to know and even his friends are hiding from him. Everything changes after the town's annual cotton-drifting festival.

Look, everything is just Open-Carry in this part of the country. It's fine, perfectly normal.

It hasn't even addressed why Mion always like CASUALLY carries a (airsoft) gun around.

Yeah, the time-travel bit and a few other parts with Rika, who we can assume now is "in-the-know" is the only real hint that this is an "in-universe" reboot and partial sequel so far. It's even really the only real hint at anything supernatural in this arc as it's ambiguous of how much of it is Keiichi's (and the audience's) superstition or the town's supposed demonic curse. Other than that though, I'm not really sure what any of that means.

It's also pretty strange how she knows all the towns traditions despite only transferring here a year before Keiichi did.

Keiichi gets recruited by disgruntled detective exactly BECAUSE he's an impartial outsider. He is neither primed to superstition or fervor and it's unlikely that he could be collaborating in any town conspiracies. But that's also like, a lot of scary information for a kid to handle, isn't it?

He's also the one that starts getting him paranoid about his own friends, specifically Rena. Probing them on an uncomfortable subject is enough to pull a hair trigger from kyuuuute to...not-so cute...

Oh, Rika has you covered on that front!!

Though, I'd be scared too if I lived in a house made of practical cardboard with no bedroom locks! How do people LIVE in Japan?! What do you do if you want some privacy?

That's one of the larger divergences!! In the 06 anime (and I presume, the original VN??) that's basically what happens! If it wasn't for Rika intervening to comfort Keiichi, he really would've just given into all that fear and paranoia..until you get to that spectacular party-time of an opening!! But here, because Rika attempts to create trust with Keiichi he ends up easing up if only a little.

Cellphones pretty much make the horror genre null-and-void anyways. No tension when you got a computer in your pocket at all times. But then again, pretty sure Keiichi would just be playing League or something at home rather than worry about which of his classmates was trying to murder him, if that were the case.

Probs to the new one for making me doubt this door scene from the original though. I was totally expecting to watch some of Rena's fingers to be smashed again. And then it lured me into a false sense of security to think that nothing was really going to happen afterwards, like a chump!!

And then this happened.

Instead of bedroom party times we end up with a Kitchen Showdown where Rena stabs Keiichi with a kitchen knife while he's trying hard to learn how to give her the time of day by bashing her with an alarm clock.

Shame about his dad's art, though.

The craziest and the most horrifying part though is that despite losing like ALL OF HIS BLOOD, Keiichi is still the one that lives and the next time he wakes up is to an unfamiliar hospital ceiling where no one wants to explain to him whether what he experienced was real or not.

It's not until Mion give it to him straight up that actually ALL OF HIS FRIENDS ARE DEAD that lead me to believe it's not actually that simple, nor is this a singular incident of one mentally deranged highschool girl.

IDK, Just seems like a supernatural case of dry skin to me!! Another case of the new series not really attempting to explain some of the things of the original leaving it to the audience to be "in-the-know" about.

Not using enough lotion is a sure-fire way of getting possessed by a demon curse!

I feel like it's the opposite. There's actually too many references and expectations being built around knowing what already happens that I think the actual set-up is a lot weaker! However, I still had fun though and comparing with the old one was neat too and actually highlights what the 06 anime and the VN did well, already. It's a digipaint-era Deen show but it had a lot direction by the notable Chiaki Kon that really made a lot of the scenes memorable that they still carry here. I think there's enough here though that anyone is sure to have fun regardless though. There's a reason Higurashi has already been adapted many times over and that's because you can't really go wrong with something instantly classic!