By the way, any word on when we can expect the Onikakushi podcast?
Hereâs my beef with Onikakushi⌠The true culprit.
End of Higurashi Kai series spoilers:
I heard Ryukishi07 made up the plot as he went. Allegedly, the whole reason for the Rika subplot of coming into existence in the first place was to troll his friend, whoâs favourite character was Rika. With that established, it is possible Rika was not intended to have much significance beyond being a moe character, and she was not the âqueen carrierâ of Hinamizawa Syndrome at this stage in the story. But if that is the case, who was the culprit, and why? Did Ryukishi07 plan out Higurashi Kaiâs incredibly complex motivations as early as Onikakushi, or is it possible Onikakushi has a different intended culprit entirely?
(Spoilers for all of Higurashi): Well, at the beginning of all the arcs we have the mysterious poems by âFrederica Bernkastel,â where Frederica couldnât be from anything other than Furude Rika (especially if you write âFredericaâ out in Japanese characters, where it becomes âFurederika.â This seems to hint that Rika is more than she appears.
(Spoilers for all of Higurashi and Hinamizawa Bus Stop): Besides, we can see that Rika was the queen carrier already even in Hinamizawa Bus Stop, so I think that was part of the story from the beginning. When he says he made the story up as he went along, he probably meant the overarching narrative (as in, how Rika was going to defeat Takano). I think itâs unlikely that he didnât know the answers to the mysteries or that he changed them to any great extent. Iâm not sure he had the finer details of Takanoâs motivation already in place from the beginning, but thatâs about as far as Iâd go.
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Pepeâs bad memory strikes again, whoops 
One point of yours is somewhat refuted by Watanagashi (I am following the MG retranslation myself)
Ooishi does mention that a syringe was found on Rika, so it is likely (though not definite) that such a syringe exists. Whether that syringe is the type of syringe that was supposedly used on Keiichi, though, is unclear- but the lines removed from his note on the back of the clock seem to point to the fact that someone wants to keep the fact that Keiichi thinks a drug that drove Tomitake to suicide exists.
So Iâm listening to the podcast and someone quoted how Mion says, âYouâre going to have done to you what happened to Tomitake-san.â Or something along those lines. Now keeping with my theory, I believe that Keiichi may have imagined most of the stuff the girls say wen they have crazy eyes. Especially that line. HE thinks that will happen, but itâs not really proven until the nocebo effect mentioned earlier kicks in. Also my theory may have already have been refuted but I havenât finished watanagashi yet so oh well
EDIT: in my original theory, I forgot to mention the fact that Keiichi says I wish I could forget what happened in the past few days. In those past few days the most significant event was taking those SMALL KNOWLEDGE BOMBS to the face.
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I wasnât sure whether to post this in this thread or the tea party thread, but since it kind of uses the podcast as a starting point for further discussion, I decided to post it here.
I really enjoyed the podcast. I thought the point about dissociation was particularly interesting. It made me realize that Keiichi actually dissociatesâŚquite a bit.
For example:
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Keiichi uses the expression âthe other me inside meâ several times. A cursory search revealed 9 instances in Onikakushi.
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He doesnât remember how he got home after Rena yelled at him.
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He throws the mochi before he even consciously realized what was in it.
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The next day on the way to school, he gets lost in thought thinking about Renaâs past and before he realizes it, theyâve arrived at the school.
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When school ends that day, he doesnât remember anything that happened during it.
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When he thinks someone invisible is behind him and attacks them, he describes himself as calm, even though heâs simultaneously experiencing raging emotions.
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He completely forgets killing Rena and Mion.
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After he realizes that he killed them, he says that the surface of his mind is panicky but in the depths of his mind, he is calm.
And these are just the examples I could think of off the top of my head. Keep in mind that Iâm far from being an expert on dissociation, and also that Iâm not necessarily saying Keiichi has a dissociation disorder, but you could perhaps make an argument that he dissociates more than your average person.
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Oh yay, finally my first actual discussion post on this forum.
I started reading Onikakushi back at the very end of the Tea Party, in hopes that I could finish it in time for the podcast. That, umm, didnt happen. But I finally have time to talk about it now.
First off, yes, this is my first time reading Higurashi. I was originally not planning on reading it any time soon, but @Aspirety convinced me to.
For the first 7 or so chapters of Onikakushi, I have to admit, I was often kinda bored. I wanted something exciting to happen, you know. I knew that the horror stuff was supposed to be coming, and I knew that Keiichi was gonna die at the end, but all the club/school stuff got kinda tiring.
By the end though, I realized why so much of the fun, goofy stuff was so important. It was a great writing technique used to make the changes in personality even more creepy, and to make the suspense of when the characters were gonna switch even greater.
Speaking of Ryukushiâs genius, the man has an almost terrifying skill in timing. In fact, forget almost; it is truly terrifying. Every transition. Sometimes even every line. I was on the edge of my seat, heart beating twice as fast as it should be, bracing myself for that moment, when shit hit the fan, whenever âthe curseâ would take over. The fade-to-black background transitions lasted just long enough. The sounds cut out or switch at just the right times. I never knew exactly when things were gonna switch from normal to scary, so my mind started thinking of every possible outcome. I knew what Keiichi knew, but I feared what the other characters knew. Even the ones I thought there was still a chance I might be able to trust. Everyone is hiding something.
For the first 8 chapters, I had insisted on only reading at night. Because it âfit the mood. Everything is scarier at night!â Then came the LIES. And I was freaked out of my mind. Ive honestly never been great with scary stuff. I almost didnt sleep that night. That was the end of Higurashi at night.
I was much more braced from then on, for anything that might come at any moment. After that I slowly stated to get used to it. There were still very intense moments, very creepy moments. But as Keiichi realized he was in real danger and started to prepare, as he gained more confidence, so did I. I became less horror-like and more mystery-like.
The ending was so hair-raising too. Like I said, pretty much the two things I knew going into this was that it was gonna be scary, and Keiichi was gonna die at the end. I had no idea how that would happen, and I think it was very well done, both in terms of writing quality of an ending, and of keeping it creepy and believable while still ambiguous and mysterious.
Also the ending cast interviews were perfect. Very F/SN Tiger Dojo-esk. A great way of making sure people stay interested by giving little tid-bits of what is still to come, while sparking theories about what has already happened. And hey, it worked on me.
Im not sure I have any âtheoriesâ yet, per say. As they said, this is still just kinda like a prologue. It was obvious that there are still tons of paths to go down, tons of strings left loose. I guess the biggest question for me at the end was âWho was the Manager, and who were those men?â Another unanswered mystery was what the Sonozakis have to do with all this, so my guess is that the two are related. Also, after reading all your guyâs posts, I guess I hadnt even considered the possibility that nothing weird was actually happening at all, and it was just Keiichi slowly going crazy the whole time.
This is also connected to so many peopleâs complaints that Keiichi did a lot of stupid, dense things in this chapter, none of which I really noticed⌠and now I realize that thats probably because how scared I was while reading it. Like I said, I kinda suck with horror stuff, and just thinking back on everything right now is giving me the creeps. Here I thought Keiichi was making a lot of the decisions I would have made myself, but I think I may have been almost as blinded by fear as he was.
Havent listened to the podcast yet, but Im sure its great!
EDIT: Now I have listened to the podcast and it was reaaaaaaally great!
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So this chapter was a decent start into the story, although to be honest, while the music wasnât bad, it wasnât that good either, meaning itâs a soundtrack that I donât really want to listen to on its own, and that happens very rarely for me.
Iâm also leaning towards âhumansâ and my current theory is somewhat similar to @cjlim2007âs at this point. Only difference is that I think that it might have been intentional, that Oishi wanted to cause paranoia. This line of thought is really only based on one line, namely that Oishi apparently visited every victim before they disappeared/died (I think that was in the conversation Keiichi overheard), and from that the baseless assumption that Oishi might be involved with the original incident, because the guy needs a motive, and thatâs my only idea at this point.[quote=âcjlim2007, post:48, topic:40â]
quoted how Mion says, âYouâre going to have done to you what happened to Tomitake-san.â Or something along those lines.
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Actually this is a line I could explain away. What if the supposed âsyringeâ in Mionâs hands was just a permanent marker? Keiichi is already pretty delusional at this point, so it could be a mistake his crazy mind might do. If it was a marker, then Mionâs line would just refer to the penalty they inflicted on Tomitake, writing stuff on his shirt. Itâs still somewhat macabre referencing a dead guy, except do the other four even know that he has died? Iâm not sure about that point.
Either way, itâll definitely be interesting to look at several conversations through the eye of well known communication models in the eventual reread, as there seem to be several instances where what is said by one person is heard differently by the other. A natural process in communication mind you, just with fatal results in this story.
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I really enjoyed it. It was spoopy but not too spoopy. A good amount of mystery that left me wondering what was going on and wanting to read more. I like most of the characters. Iâm really interested to see where things go from here!
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Hey @octoberpumpkin! Good to meet you! I hope that you are enjoying the forum so far. If youâd like to introduce yourself so that we can get to know you better we have an Introduce Yourself thread here. Weâd love to hear more of your thoughts on other chapters of Higurashi and Umineko if you are so inclined. Thanks for posting! (Also I love your avatar.)
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