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EP. REVIEW: Higurashi: When They Cry – GOU

I think this is clear from the stuff in this series without using knowledge from previous series, but I'll put it in spoilers just in case: spoiler[Keichi may be the primary point of view character, but he isn't the one looping. Rika is.]

...if it was just Rica then all she would have to do is get on a train and ride it to some place outside of the village until the loop period ended at which point she would still be alive and all would be well... at least she would be okay.

So back to what I said earlier, I assume then, unless everything goes perfectly at some certain point on the final day the loop resets. Though, I'm not sure what is defined as perfectly in this series. Everyone living? The Shadow organization being found out and dealt with? Sacrificing the right person or people to the god? Or who knows whatever else...

I just hope at some point we get an actual ending figuring out what unbelievable series of events had to take place and in what order for the loop to be broken and everyone or at least some of them to move on to whatever their future is.

Doesn't Keiichi need to die for the loop to reset, or is it more like Groundhog Day, where unless everything happens perfectly (everyone lives?) no matter what else happens it will reset at some point on that last day? I just don't understand why there was so much effort put into killing Keiichi in the first arc but here, apparently, the loop is going to reset with Keiichi still alive and relatively well.

Doesn't look like she cares at all about doing the right thing period all she does is complain when people do the wrong thing. She in no way says what not to do. Maybe this was dealt with in an earlier loop?

PonSquared wrote:

Doesn't Keiichi need to die for the loop to reset, or is it more like Groundhog Day, where unless everything happens perfectly (everyone lives?) no matter what else happens it will reset at some point on that last day? I just don't understand why there was so much effort put into killing Keiichi in the first arc but here, apparently, the loop is going to reset with Keiichi still alive and relatively well.

Loops don't reset, they keep going, because they aren't really "loops". They don't stop existing because one character dies, no matter how important that character is. spoiler[The "fragments" in Higurashi are basically alternate worlds. Whenever Rika dies, Hanyuu takes her to a new fragment to start over, but the fragment she was just in doesn't just grind to a halt.]

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Doesn't look like she cares at all about doing the right thing period all she does is complain when people do the wrong thing. She in no way says what not to do. Maybe this was dealt with in an earlier loop?

Honestly Rika's irritation is pretty understandable, but she's making assumptions about what will happen or what's going to happen based on what's happened before and is lashing out when things don't go according to plan or when people don't behave in ways that she thinks they should.

For example. when Keiichi is confessing to her that he snuck into the storehouse and using "cats" as a not so subtle metaphor (minor spoilers for the original story) spoiler[it turns out that, in the original version of this loop, Rika was the one that always initiated that dialogue. Keiichi never brought it up on his own. So for him to suddenly start talking like that means he likely vaguely remembers what their original conversation was like, just like he had those brief flashbacks of killing Rena in Onidamashi-hen. He remembers a trivial detail like that, but he doesn't remember anything important, like *not* to go into the storehouse? That's what she's frustrated about.]

If these are all alternative worlds and not a loop of the same world repeating itself, then how could Keiichi from universe 325436 possibly remember what he said or did from universe 427647432? Seems like a bit of a contradiction there...