Yay! Finished my re-read.
I liked this a lot more than I remember liking Onikakushi. I think it may be because I haven’t interacted with Higurashi in a long time that I wasn’t thinking of it as the mountain of an intro you have to go through to get to the good stuff. The balance between slice of life and mystery is pretty good for an opening arc, you really get a feel for how tragic it is for Keiichi when things start going to hell.
One thing I like is going back and seeing how well planed this whole thing was from the beginning. In anime and manga you end up with a lot of shows that feel like they are flying by the seat of their pants, but there is a lot of really good foreshadowing in this arc for all of Higurashi as whole.
HIGURASHI SERIES END SPOILERS
There were a few places in particular that stood out as foreshadowing or hints that I was really excited to see.
This basically spells out the whole thing. I know Rika is not the guilty party, but it calls your attention to every key element. It is shuffled in a way that makes it easy to overlook, but with the crime game it calls enough attention to it.
This felt like a call out to one of the series themes as a whole. The idea that even with the odds stacked against and the game seeming unwinnable you still need to struggle a bit more and you really might have your breakthrough.
One of my favorite parts of reading the VN as opposed to experiencing the story any other way is the TIPS sections. I especially like getting to read the newspaper articles about the murders - the ominous one about the housewife that basically instantly ended was a really nice touch. The uniform and one on Rena’s name are also interesting things that get you thinking. I like that it is also an in universe explanation for why everyone wears different uniforms besides “because they are a main character”
So one thing I do have to say, I am not huge on the naturalization of the Mangagamer translation. I was reading the Steam version, and while it was better than I remember reading on iOS previously I thought it was still pretty lacking. The vocabulary in the dialog had a lot words that didn’t fit with the tone of the character or conversation. It really could have used more work with one editor trying to unify it a bit.
I watched the Onikakushi arc to the anime directly after finishing reading through this - bad choice - but it was interesting. The anime is probably more of “ride” where things keep happening and it is exciting but it doesn’t feel like they give you enough information to really figure anything out. The novel is clearly giving you information in a way that says it wants you to be actively thinking about the mystery parts as you read.