Mmm, I disagree with you about Takano in both directions.
First, I don’t think she is the primary example of anti-fantasy in Higurashi. Ooishi, for example, is also a constant voice of believing in a human culprit, that everything in the world can be explained by humans, etc. etc. Dr. Irie’s search for a scientific reason why people go crazy is also closer to anti-fantasy than anti-mystery, even if the results of that investigation are the highly fantastical brain parasites. I would call Hinamizawa syndrome the Higurashi version of ‘small bombs’. It’s not fantasy, but it’s not really putting forward a solution either. In that sense, Hinamizawa syndrome is even worse than small bombs, because you don’t need far-fetched sci-fi brain parasites to figure out that people who are stressed out and under pressure often do crazy things that they wouldn’t in normal circumstances.
Second, I don’t think her methods and techniques really line up with anti-fantasy on the whole either. Like, let’s use Erika as the template for ‘anti-fantasy and villainous about it’ and compare. Throwing out a thousand and one crazy theories in the form of her notebooks, then deciding ‘the truth is THAT one’ and spin-doctoring everything to fit it is kind of within Erika’s wheel-house though the craziness of the theories (brain parasites, ancient aliens, etc.) does not really line up with an Erika style anti-fantasy mindset, but then after that comes the need for others to approve the theory and tell her how right she is. She does all the research and gathers/fakes all the evidence, but then she never publishes. She is apparently content to know her theory has been accepted by who-ever this Tokyo cabal is, and she doesn’t actually evangelize her god-hood. It just fizzles out and she and her theories are never heard from again in the world of many years later. This is not consistent with an Erika style anti-fantasy character. If there is one thing I know about arrogant anti-theists it is that they have an all-consuming NEED to rub it in the face of believers that They. Were. Right.
But this is all drifting really hard from where I’m coming from and what I’m trying to get at. It’s a little hard to explain, but I’ll try.
Despite the novel format, it’s pretty spelled out that When they Cry, both in Higurashi and Umineko, are something that Ryukishi considers as games. It’s not quite like chess, but there is a desired flow of turns. Ryukishi puts out a mystery, the fans theorize, and Ryukishi incorporates that feedback into creating the next chapter and revealing things both ‘backwards’ in presenting new data for previous chapters and tweaking new story elements to either subvert or play in to the readers’ expectations that he has heard. For both series, the 8th episode in particular is a kind of reflection of all the answers and feedback Ryukishi has seen. Not so much an answer session as an expression of pulling together all the thoughts and ideas he got from the fanbase.
So, when I look at Matsuribayashi hen and all the crazy reveals in there, I feel like it’s we the readers as detectives getting a bad grade on the test. Suddenly there were brain parasites. Suddenly magical horned-girl is walking around with people. Suddenly Takano has syringes of super parasite drugs capable of making people claw their own throats out even though that was pretty explicitly denied in Onikakushi. If we the readers were supposed to follow along with the detectives and come up with solutions to the mysteries, this is Ryukishi saying we pretty much failed to come up with anything even close. He doesn’t scold, or rant angrily about it or anything, he just presents a tale steeped in fantasy and is perfectly happy to just leave that last confession out of the very end of ‘And Then There Were None’. Let the readers keep believing in U.N.Owen. They haven’t earned anything better.
I can understand that sort of mindset, because I have seen it in action elsewhere. I played an RPG once where a big part of the story was the characters trying to figure out the mysteries of what’s really going on while they survive various perils. At the end of the case, I gave my theories and reasoning for what’s going on. The GM smiled, nodded and said ‘That’s some pretty clever thinking.’ but refused to actually confirm the truth of the story or how right/wrong I was. He said ‘that’s how life is, you don’t always get answers’ and moved on to the next quest because that sort of doubt and uncertainty was part of his artistic vision for the story of the game.
So I get it. We played at being detective, we lost, and it’s on to the next game. Matsuribayashi-hen wrapped up the character arcs in an emotionally satisfying and conclusive way, a few side stories to keep the paychecks coming in because Ryukishi needs to eat just like everyone else, and then off to Rokkenjima where some things were explained a bit more in the hopes of making a more interesting game.
And yet…
And yet my pride as a reader is not satisfied. I want to go back and try again. Like a stubborn gamer facing a Souls boss over and over again, I want to piece together the clues that create a new Matsuribayashi-hen. So I’m rethinking it from the question arcs and most of the answer arcs, but the big reveals from Ep 8 are discarded. It is forbidden for the mystery to be solved with clues that are not presented. There is an answer here. There were clues in the text. We missed it before, but I intend to find it this time. And thus, this thread was born.