Higanbana 2nd Night Ch. 1: The Lunar Festival

Aspirety · October 20, 2017, 10:08am

Ch8

General discussion topic for Chapter 1: The Lunar Festival of Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni: The Second Night. Please tag any references to later chapters or outside works with the [spoiler] tag, providing adequate context in parenthesis.
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Aspirety · September 10, 2017, 4:18pm

I swear this chapter is somehow familiar to me, like I read a synopsis of it somewhere years ago or something…

A cool little prologue to The Second Night! We finally get that long-overdue introduction to the seven Youkai, and everything’s just kinda chill in this setting where everyone can put aside their differences and enjoy themselves. I’m particularly interested in Izanami, and I’m very suspicious of Azami. Wonder where those characters will take the story. But yeah, fun chapter! Got us caught up on the Youkai, and even presented a very interesting mystery. The banquet on the old school building roof that never happened. I mean, it definitely happened; Marie met characters she’s never interacted with before. I’m very curious how that might be explained. My current theory is that it has something to do with the ‘Mirror World’ that Kyou guards.

Anyway, let’s share my tweets!

EDIT: This may also be a good time to start questioning…

Which of the seven want Marie removed from the group?

Antra · September 11, 2017, 2:56am

Basically me near the end:

Karifean · September 19, 2017, 2:04pm

Yeah, ain’t got much to say. Meeting more of the youkai in a relaxed setting was cool. Hope to see more of them soon.

Almost feels like the Old School Building was the main character of this chapter, heh.

VyseGolbez · September 21, 2017, 5:41pm

Hmm, let’s see…

Headmaster: Seems somewhat neutral, so I’ll put him in whatever list I end up less with, since it was originally a 3 vs 3 setup with Higanbana not having chosen yet.

Izanami: If he’s the ideal of strength as Aspi thinks, I could see him supportive of Marie, since she tried (although somewhat in vain) to change something in chapter 1 of the first night.

Azami: Probably against Marie, mainly because I think Sumire is against Marie and I think the two are on the same side of that particular conflict.

Kyou: Another wild card where I don’t really know what to think yet.

Renoir: Probably for Marie mainly because he seems to be pretty passive about how he hunts. Also if he doesn’t make an appearance in this VN, I’ll nickname him “Sir Not Appearing In This Visual Novel” in my mind.

Sumire: Probably against Marie, in part on the conflict we already had in chapter 7 of first night and because she was pretty ruthless in that.

So that makes a 2 vs 2 with 2 more being “who knows” for me. Personally leaning with the headmaster for Marie here.

Otherwise, there’s really not much to say about this chapter.

Aspirety · September 22, 2017, 4:17am

What about first impressions of the cast?

TsukiyoAlex · September 23, 2017, 10:13pm

That cherry petal effect was so beautiful. I hope it gets used in future games.^ ^
I wonder what actually happened that night. Does it have any meaning or was it just a cast introduction? Whatever the case it was a funny chapter.

amenenee · October 1, 2017, 12:00am

As I read the Lunar Festival, I got a few laughs. Marie’s lack of fashion sense is entirely like me, and I think it’s great that after being an hour late to the Festival, she arrived in a simple school outfit. Since my own clothes don’t ever get fancier than yoga pants, t-shirts, and a beanie, as well as the occassional coat, I also would have a hard time if I had to imagine myself in a fancy, or even semi-presentable western style dress. Switching it up for me is finding a new color shirt to wear after only wearing black or gray for 4 days straight!

It makes me very happy to see Sakut–… Sakunoshin. He warms my heart. It was definitely a surprise, and a bit confusing, to see the school nurse there. I forgot what her name was…

It’s very interesting to me that youkai consider their lifespan only as long as they are remembered for. It draws some similarities to some concepts in Umineko, mainly (full series spoilers)the basis of needing people to believe in them to validate their existence. In some ways it’s very sad, but given they’re school youkai, the concept makes sense. It’s sort of like they cannot totally escape death despite already not being physical beings, or in Marie’s case, having already died.

I wonder just how similar the concept of youkai is compared to that of witches. It’s something I have wondered since first starting the First Night. Hopefully by the end of the second, I’ll be able to draw my own conclusions!

I really enjoy this quote:
“It is because the night is dyed thick with darkness that the day may sparkle with the light.” That’s really poetic.

The discussion of dreams started by… uh, the 2nd ranked youkai, Inazami, is interesting.

When you look at it, there are two main stances to dreams. You can not dream, or you can drown in them. Of course, there are definitely in betweens to that, these stances are simply the two extremes presented by Inazami and Black Tea Gentleman. My fantasy prone personality is inclined to go with the idea of drowning in dreams by default, but Marie has a healthy quote here that also shouldn’t be ignored.

Like Marie says, this is probably the way the majority of the population looks at dreams. I very much think this outlook is the healthiest, but it’s not the one I personally live by. Moving on.

I was a bit shocked with Marie woke up after drinking alcohol all alone, and when her story did not match Higanbana’s. Unexpected, but it’s something I ponder over quite often. Are my memories real? Did yesterday really happen as I remember it? Are my memories all delusions, writing over reality like fall leaves begin to cover the grass? I do wonder about it quite a lot.

I also wonder, was the old school building simply expressing its thanks to Marie for inhabiting it? And how was Marie able to meet these youkai that she had never seen before? It’s very interesting.

I’m looking forward to the next chapter!

Aspirety · October 1, 2017, 4:58am

I’m gonna post a slight spoiler for the sake of furthering discussion: the mystery at the end is never answered later in the story, so I encourage you all to think about it and try to reach an answer yourself.

MagusVerborum · October 7, 2017, 10:29pm

I’m a little late to the discussion and I don’t have a ton to add as of right now. It is interesting to me that we don’t get answers about this night later on in the story, my notes are mainly about what the ‘blossoming’ means. The Higanbana of the festival (who seems to be speaking oddly at the time) indicates that the old schhol building has chosen to ‘blossom’ inside of marie, I speculate this to mean that there is a revival of some kind of the old school spirits (who are talked about a lot in this chapter) are going to be acting through marie somehow. I wonder if this has some grounded meaning later on in the story or if the old school building (let’s call it TOSB) is a force of nature here, representing the will of the earth or a spirit that’s just more responsible and far-seeing than the Youkai of the new building.

I also noticed what i think is an allusion to Persephone’s temptation in the underworld. In Greek mythology Persephone was tempted to come to the underworld and ate seeds from a pomegranate, the fruit of the Underworld. Because of this consumption Persephone essentially became addicted to it and was compelled to visit the Underworld regularly, thus creating Winter in the upper world. I’m not sure entirely what this means yet, other than that it solidifies Marie’s place in the Youkai ranks, in this context it’s more of a case of being welcomed by TOSB than being bound into marriage with it. The entire thing also seems to elude to the hope that something innocent and pure can ‘blossom’ in a place it noramlly couldn’t, like some sort of (Higurashi spoilers) ‘flower from hell’ perhaps? cough spider lillies cough

There’s also more allusions to the necessity of people believing in the mysteries for the Youkai to continue existing, which is neat. Although i don’t know who’s believing in Kyou ‘Edgelord’ the Fifth because man is he the worst. he looks like he’s about to Naruto-run across ca- … have i used that joke too many times already?

Despite all of this the most confounding mystery of all is still Nurse. She’s everywhere and I don’t understand, she’s probably revealed to be TOSB by the end of the novel, and if not that’s the headcanon I’m sticking with.

Aspirety · October 6, 2017, 4:33pm

Wait, I don’t get your joke about Renoir

MagusVerborum · October 7, 2017, 6:49am

I made the same joke about Kanon over in our Umineko playthrough thread, making fun of his new get up for the festival. Both of them look like they want to Naruto-run across campus

EDIT: Ah I got Renoir and Kyou mixed up, should make sense now.

Ushiromiya_Battler · November 14, 2017, 6:12pm

A yokai-centric chapter, huh?

This chapter was okay.

It was fairly short and not much happened, but I guess I can share my thoughts on the new yokai:

Izanami: fairly likable personality, even if he’s a bit crude.
Azami: Sumire’s sister and she’s nice…or maybe she faking it? Genuinely nice? No idea. Wouldn’t be surprised if she was merely acting and was actually as evil as Sumire.
Renoir: Not much to say, he was asleep, lol.
Kyou: Very cool concept and appearance, I like his style.

It’s difficult to explain what happened here, but one interpretation that I’m going with is that Marie becoming a yokai could potentially spark the birth of new ones within the old school building. Isn’t it unusual for there to be eight school mysteries? My prediction right now is that the new school building will end up having only seven school mysteries, and that Marie will eventually become the first-ranked yokai of the old school building which will also increase in the number of mysteries (somehow). I feel like there was too much emphasis on the old school building and Marie getting to drink that “juice” for it not to lead anywhere.

As to Marie somehow meeting the rest of the yokai despite the fact she never actually showed up on the roof of the new school building, perhaps it’s symbolism or even foreshadowing that in the future, the old school building will also assemble its own set of yokai.

My favorite scene was probably Marie and Higanbana casually pretending like they were meeting for the first time. I don’t know why exactly, I just thought it was very sweet.

Wight · January 9, 2018, 2:48am

I don’t really have anything insightful to say about this brief chapter, but I really appreciate the Fantasy feel it had. I think I would like to read something from Ryukishi that’s closer to straight up Fantasy to see how creative he gets because he has shown some really cool ideas in his work and some of them I would absolutely love to see fleshed out more. What kind of original world could he make and how would it work? His mystery and horror feels like his trademark style but I think he has good potential to construct something magical and fascinating that isn’t as heavy on shock and mindbending.

Although, if I had to say something about the chapter itself, it’s that it made the school nurse even more curious of a character for me. If the other youkai don’t know about the banquet Marie was at… what does this mean for the non-youkai school nurse? Was she really on the rooftop or not, and in either case what was she doing up there and why did she show up? Is there a connection to her and the cherry blossom tree? I don’t have any theories about her but I would like to be surprised should she play a large role in a future chapter.