The snake in the well was happy. For it did not care what was outside the well.
The snake in the well was happy. For it had naught to do with what happened outside the well.
And you were happy too. For you did not know what happened outside the well.
Spoiler-free general discussion topic for Chapter 3: Tatarigoroshi of Higurashi When They Cry. Chapter 3 refers to episodes 9-13 of the first anime series.
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So I finally read Tatarigoroshi after seeing that the PS3 assets patch was finally done.
Overall, I enjoyed it greatly and I feel like especially its middle third was incredible. The beginning was quite pleasant but nothing special (and its deconstruction, by its very nature, couldnāt top Onikakushi for me). The best new overall addition was easily the new tracks which are sad and mysterious in nature. And that strangely upbeat theme in the Satoko breakdown scene in the classroom when Keiichi has that ā1500 secondsā inner monologue was balls-to-the-wall crazy and I loved it.
The middle third is the best part for me, because starting from the collapse of the āgroup of friendsā impression/ faƧade while Rena, Mion and Keiichi are arguing about how to save Satoko to that bloodcurdling breakdown scene, it was all too real and it packed a really big punch. I find that the latter third really moved away from Satokoās abuse into Keiichiās own breakdown, and that kind of lessened my enjoyment a bit since the middle third was a masterpiece of tragedy (like how Onikakushiās latter half was a masterpiece of tension and horror) while the latter third just threw a lot into your face. And honestly the āDeath wishes come trueā mystery drew me away after a while since it felt somewhat over-the-top as well as feeling utterly unsolvable or unreasonable as of yet. I feel like the game should have kept a semblance of true stability and a return to happiness temporarily after the Watanagashi night, but of course that likely wouldnāt mesh with the answer of the mystery.
I also took a few pagesā worth of notes this time around (and the obsession to do that kind of hurt my engagement, lol) and Iād like to go over points, theories and questions to discuss.
Satoshi apparently disappeared a few days after Watanagashi. Doesnāt this contradict the whole āOnikakushiā concept? Didnāt Takano, the person to get "Onikakushi"d in Onikakushi, disappear right after Watanagashi?
Takano and what is -likely- Jirouās bike. The game screams that Takano also committed some sort of murder on the night of the Watanagashi, so it seems really logical to connect the two, but as far as we know, Tomitake died from being beaten up by a group + scratching his own throat out, so that doesnāt connect as to how Takano would be complicit in his murder. Sheās also (supposedly) found burning in an oil barrel up in the mountains just like in Watanagashi, by being suffocated and then getting found by her corpse getting set on fire around early morning hours. Now, we know by Tatarigoroshi that Takano was using a car on the night of the Watanagashi, so I find it curious that her car is not mentioned elsewhere- I find that it supports my previous theory that Takano was aiming to evade the wrath of the village (which sheād draw by investigating the shrine storehouse) by burning a corpse, mixing up its dental records with her own, and disappearing- the lack of her car being found (although Ooishi does have a āvery averageā carās license plate check which could very well be hers) could be spun for both ways of the āTakano really died/Takano is aliveā argument, though. As for the bike, by Takanoās own words, āIt makes no sense for Tomitake and his bike to be separate in Hinamizawaā- as thereās nowhere for him to stay in Hinamizawa and heād at least need a bike to return to town. The very emphasis of that and that whole scene makes me think that Takano knows something about Tomitake that we donāt, but it feels like too obvious a conclusion to draw.
Takanoās fate. In Onikakushi, far as we know, she disappears without a trace. In Watanagashi and Tatarigoroshi, however, we know that -supposedly- her corpse is burned in the mountains, which likely means that the same occurred in Onikakushi although the difference is that her corpse was not burned then- which begets the question, why? And by whom?
Satoshiās similarity to Keiichi is really, really sketchy- a point emphasized in both Onikakushi and Tatarigoroshi: The difference is that, Onikakushi depicted a marked shift to paranoia and distance for them both while Tatarigoroshi connected the two through their relationships with Satoko and Satokoās foster parents. I have a hunch that the person who spent time with the others during the festival was actually Satoshi, but I canāt really establish why- though I think no Keiichi would be able to truly have fun during the festival. Also, regarding the bat: Is it possible, if Keiichiās theory that Satoshi killed Satokoās aunt is true, that Satoshi was actually carrying the bat in order to prepare for killing his own aunt? Mion confusing Keiichiās voice for Satoshiās also seems to point to me that the two are very similar.
I think that Keiichi couldnāt find the corpse where he buried it because someone who knew it was there dug it back out, dug a bit deeper and buried the drainage pipe in its place, and then disposed of the body in some other manner (I donāt know if itād be possible to disguise that, but perhaps that was the body that was burned?- but no, that leaves a hole since who would be the burned corpse in Watanagashi, then?)
I think that Keiichi killed a friend of Satokoās uncle- in his neglect (and his oh-so-precious bath), Teppei likely sent someone to the police station with his motorbike to take care of Satoko, who was the person Keiichi killed. We do have objective info from Ooishi -IIRC- that Teppei did leave his house and not return by nightfall, though, so this is shaky. Iām certain that Keiichi killed someone else in his hysteria and bloodlust, though- his unhingedness really shines through (the talk of ānot having a beginning to the mysteryā despite begging for Mion to kill Satokoās uncle the day before was especially a big oversight) in that whole segment, and unless you invoke supernatural stuff, Teppei not dying on the night of the Watanagashi is the only understandable explanation. If you trust Satoko, that isā¦
Keiichi surviving the poisonous fumes. I have two ideas:
A) Someone found and hid Keiichi while the gas dissipated- Satoko and Teppei are among the 20 people who are āmissingā according to the credits.
B) The river actually carried Keiichi downstream and then washed him ashore somewhere else- but I am far from sure since he could find his way back easily into Hinamizawa. Though him āfinding himself on a dismantled car seatā is very curious infoā¦ That car seat could belong to Ooishiās car (for all we know he just lost his car) or Takanoās.
Irieās death: We donāt know if he was force-fed the pillsā¦
Re: the ā1500 Secondsā rant: Everyone said that Keiichiās eyes got weirdā¦ To me, that sounds crazily familiar to the scary eyes Rena and Mion put on in the first two arcs (and Satoko did, in Tatarigoroshi). However, the first two could hold a conversation while Satoko suppressed any effects those eyes might have had except failing to conceal her despair- Keiichi was apparently moaning on the floor, collapsed.
Thatās all I have on my mind for now, but Iād love to hear your opinions about Tatarigoroshiās mysteries!
Edit: Also, I think that the loud āboomā sound you get with the Higurashi logo at the very end of every arc signifies the Hinamizawa Disaster- which means that Keiichi just isnāt alive to see the massacre in the other arcs so far. The white light/hue around the icon could be signifying the gas thst seeped through Hinamizawa.
Moreover, there was a spiral-like transition at the moment where Keiichi collapsed in the classroom and had the whole ā1500 secondsā internal monologue. You know where else do we see that transition? The moment when you start playing an arc from the beginning.
I believe this to be crucial.
Also, I have nothing to say about Rikaāa very own watanagashi.
First time posting, let me know if Iām doing anything wrong, but here it goes. Full Tatarigoroshi spoilers ahead.
Iām reading through Higurashi for the first time and I just finished Tatarigoroshi today. It was quite a ride, very different from the first two.
I agree with what Funyarinpa said that the story seems to kind of trail off in the end, and not in a very positive way. My main problem is that the whole thing with Keiichi wishing people dead seems so far different from anything that has been previously established, that I found myself dismissing most of the last segments simply because ātheyāre probably just Keiichi going insane or hallucinatingā, specially with the whole Disaster ending.
So far, from the previous two entries, Iām very much aligned with the āthe crimes are being perpetrated by peopleā theory, in other words, not being a curse. And the idea that a natural disaster like that could happen without human intervention just leaves me wondering how the story would proceed from there, since if it actually happened, it would mean that no matter how things are explained, they will always end up with the unavoidable Hinamizawa Disaster. Thatās my reasoning for dismissing it as not actually happening.
Maybe Iām just picking over a minute detail, but Takano mentions that she canāt put Keiichiās bike on the trunk of her car since itās full. Thatās also why she has Tomitakeās bike on the back seats. From this, and the later turn of the encounter, I assumed that she had somehow kidnapped Tomitake and she was transporting him in the trunk. That would align with what sheās saying: Tomitake isnāt separated from his bike, they are both together in the car.
A couple of other things that got my attention from Tatarigoshi were:
Keiichi taking way too long to associate Satoshiās disappearance with the assault on Satokoās aunt. I felt this reveal was pretty weak, since I figure many readers will have made the connection much earlier, and itās always frustrating to realize things way before the main character, only for them to play it out as a big reveal.
The eyes during Keiichiās out-body experience took me back to a particular CG in the PS3 version of Wataganashi
The context of this CG, if I remember correctly, was the phone call with Mion, or rather, the reveal that it wasnāt Shion on the phone, or rather Mion, who also had a theme of being possessed by an Oni-like entity. Again, maybe Iām grasping at straws, but it could very well be the moment Keiichi becomes āpossessedā by this other personality that drives him into a murderous state.
Another throwback was the presence of the footsteps, although I believe this one isnāt very literal, but in Onikakushi there was a mention of this in a scene where Keiichi is entering his home and feels another presence following him, later revealed during one of the TIPS to be Rena. It made me think for a while that this was the case in Tatarigoroshi too, but I discarded that idea, itās probably unrelated.
The character of Coach I believe ties in very well with the āchiefā that Rena and Mion call in the ending of the first chapter, or at least thatās the impression I get. He works in the clinic, too, which could explain why he has access to the drug.
Finally, Rikaās murder. I donāt believe Keiichi did it. Last time around, she got murdered by Mion, who was last seen in Tatarigoroshi with Rena, both of them being on an altered state. I canāt imagine why she would do it this time around, though.
EDIT:
One last thing I forgot to mention, is that itās interesting how much Ooishi acts differently to Keiichi relative to the other arcs. Sure, he was manipulative before, but heās an outright asshole this time around.
The fact that he mentions he was expecting Satokoās uncle to get killed, was keeping watch on his house and yet he didnāt follow him when he left is also very suspicious.
Hey guys, sorry Iām late! Just finished reading Tatarigoroshi for the Tea Party last night, and boy do I love this chapter! Itās a hell of a ride, expanding on some of the themes of Onikakushi but also doing itās own thing. Anyway, let me start by responding to people.
As far as Iām aware, the Onikakushis donāt always follow immediately after the initial killings. Thereās sometimes delay between them.
Are we sure that she wasnāt burned in Onikakushi? Maybe it just wasnāt shown?
Well they didnāt ābury a drainage pipeā, the drainage pipe just happened to be under where Keiichi dug. This is definitely the biggest mystery of the chapter to me, but I canāt help but think along those lines as well. The question that remains is, who, and why? The only answer I can think of is Takano, but I have no idea why she would make that effort.
Whatās really interesting to me is that we never see Teppei after heās ākilledā. The writing and Satakoās testimony certainly leads us to believe heās still around, but then there was also the point that Ooishi couldnāt track down his whereabouts during one of the TIPS where Tomitake and Takanoās bodies were found. Is there any possibility that Keiichi really did kill him? The credits even tell us that Teppei and Satako were missing after the disaster, so they really did keep it ambiguous enough to keep guessing.
I love how this chapter plays with the concept of Keiichi losing his mind, but also throwing in just enough evidence that heās completely sane that you really need to think hard about whatās going on here. Keiichi couldnāt comprehend it, so he reached the conclusion that āItās Watanagashi thatās crazy, not meā. What do you think?
But hold on. In Watanagashi, we are presented with a scenario where a bunch of people are killed, Keiichi leaves Hinamizawa and is hospitalised for a while, and as far as we are aware no disaster occurred. I canāt say the same for Onikakushi, but isnāt that weird?
This All-Cast review session introduced the idea that all the Chapters are like different āroutesā of a visual novel, where somebody made a different choice which lead to a different outcome. But what kind of choice could cause or prevent an outbreak of volcanic gasses?
Interesting observation! It turns out that the term āmanagerā used in Onikakushi is identical to the term used here for ācoachā: ē£ē£ or kantoku means both these things. And yes, thatās what theyāre saying in both cases.
Now for some observations of my own, and a few questions of interest.
In this Chapter it was strongly suggested that Satoshi and Shion were in a relationship. Interesting that this was only brought up now.
Shion committed suicide. Again? What the heck, why?
Why was Rika killed? This is another one of those weird mysteries with no immediate answer in sight. Immediately after we got the interesting tidbit that Rika might be an incarnation of Oyashiro, and that killing her might purge the town into darkness. And, hey, it really happenedā¦
What this chapter, and Higurashi at large does well is presenting you with multiple interpretations of various mysteries. It plays with your head by presenting things as meaningful patterns, which leads you to draw conclusions on causality. Keiichi wished these people would die, so they died. But we know that Takano dies in every chapter, so as a reader we already have a counter-example to Keiichiās theory. But then, Irie did apparently commit suicide, and Ooishi apparently disappared, but did he? When I read that chapter I read āstill looking for Ooishiās carā as looking for the car he reported, howeverā¦ The credit role says he really did disappear? Odd. Again, this is something which didnāt happen in Watanagashi. And then, thereās also the way you can connect Rikaās death to the natural disaster, but I dunno, thatās a very supernatural explanation itself, weāre just trading one for another.
Watanagashi did a very similar thing with the storehouse. The idea was that people were being killed because they went into the storehouse, but then the story goes out of itās way to provide alternative explanations. Keiichi may end up fixated on one or two ideas, but we as the reader have an advantage because we have access to more information than him (and weāre not living in constant paranoia that we and everyone we love is gonna die).
Thereās also those footsteps coming back. First Keiichi feeling like thereās someone following him, then Shion complaining about footsteps in the storehouse, now back to Keiichi hearing footsteps everywhereā¦ Popular theory seems to suggest itās the ghost of Satoshi right now. ~Spooky~
Renaās speech about how we should treasure every small happiness so when everyone dies in a horrible disaster, we can say we lived without regret. How very poignant.
Iāll come back to this if thereās anything else I remember to bring up, but god I love this chapter, fuck the haters. The later scenes of the ātwisted worldā donāt make the drama of Satoko any less meaningful. If anything, seeing Keiichi driven to that point is tragic in itās own way, assuming heās the trigger for everything that came after.
EDIT: Oh yeah. Interesting how the All-Star Cast Review seemed to strongly suggest that this was intended as the final Question arc, until the last line (which Iāll assume was added either in Hou or by Mangagamer themselves). Can anyone shed light on this? Was Himatsubushi a last-minute decision?
I mean, itās not totally inaccurate either, since Himatsubushi is more of a side story than a legitimate story arc. I definitely feel like Tatarigoroshi, while full of mysteries itself, also provides the final pieces of the puzzle for the reader to start piecing together a grand narrative connecting all the story arcs. I hope we can get a lot more discussion happening.
Yeah, Tatarigoroshi was originally intended to be the final question arc, but Ryukishi was having a really difficult time writing Meakashi, so he took a break and wrote Himatsubushi.
So Iām just through the first 4 chapters of this chapter (chapterception) and am enjoying it quite a bit! I guess Iāve just crossed the threshold of when the daily life sequences end and, as expected, this chapter is making me like Satoko a lot more. (note she was already my favorite club member after reading the first two episodes)
The daily life sequences were, I felt, much more enjoyable in this chapter. The club games more exciting, and the dinner sequences with Satoko and/or Rika were quite heartwarming. The game also brought āfood pornā to a whole new level, heh.
One thing I noticed is that Mion is starting to get a lot more reliable in this chapter; of course since she tries to explain what happened to Satoshi like a decent human being (which would have helped in, oh I dunno, literally everything about chapter 1). Considering Rena was more reliable in chapter 2, is this a pattern I am seeing?
Another thing I notice is that the timeline between chapters isā¦ wellā¦ weird. So apparently the start of chapter 2 takes place after Keiichi mistakes Mion for Shion and goes on a date with Shion? Wouldnāt that just push the events of chapter 2 all over again? I mean, of course it wonāt in this chapter, butā¦ Where exactly does each chapter diverge in the storyline?
And lastly, and this is just a crazy theory, but Iām starting to think that Satokoās traps in the mountain may have one thing or another to do with this whole āOyashiro-samaā curse thing. Not pushing this theory, but if it happens to be true, I wouldnāt be surprised ā is all Iām saying
I also found myself enjoying the daily life sequences a lot more for the most part. I was really getting antsy reading through them in Chapter 2 and even skipped a bit, but in Chapter 3 I never really reached that point, it was all relatively enjoyable.
Mapping out the timeline of the Higurashi chapters is definitely something this Chapter is prompting us to do. We know it takes place after the Curry competition in Chapter 2, and after mistaking Shion for Mion (though weāre uncertain how similar this was to Chapter 2).
Fitting Chapter 1 in seems to be a lot more difficult though. As far as I can tell, Chapter 1 began the earliest, roughly 3 weeks after meeting the girls. But the events which occur are a bit different. They never have the match at the toy store, they never meet Shion, etc etc. The biggest common point would be Watanagashi itself.
Hmmā¦rather than thinking of the timeline diverging after those events, I think of it more as similar events just happening to occur in both arcs.
Besides, itās impossible for the curry competition and meeting Shion to have taken place at the same time in both arcs, because Tatarigoroshi starts a good three days before Watanagashi does.
Well, Sundays are easy to identify in Higurashi because thereās no school. So if we look at the āSunday before the Watanagashi festivalā in both arcs, we see that in Watanagashi, itās the game tournament at the toy shop, and in Tatarigoroshi, itās the barbecue at the shrine. In Watanagashi, this day is the start of the arc, but in Tatarigoroshi, the start is three days earlier.
Also, each chapter title in the light novel versions of the question arcs is the date the chapter takes place.
Pepe mentioning the traps reminded me of how much I expected them to be used in the forest scene. It would have been some nice poetic justice, albeit maybe a bit too obvious.
A fun fact: Ryukishi wrote the opening chapter of Meakashi-hen before Himatsbushi-hen (he stated so in the end notes of the manga before), but in addition to Meakashi stumping him, he kept feeling a pull to developing Himatsubushi-hen. Still, Tatarigoroshiās the last time we get Keiichi as a protagonist for the Question Arcs and the last of the Question Arcs to take place in June 1983/Showa 58 (since Himatsubushi takes place in June 1978/Showa 53).
Yeah, things really diverge differently in each arc! Like, for example, in Onikakushi, Keiichi doesnāt join the club until AFTER he comes back from the city, and in these two arcs, heās already in the club by that time. (I wonder what counts as the worst possible arc of the question arcs according to Ryukishi? Watanagashi where Mion kills their friends, Onikakushi where Keiichi kills his friends and doesnāt trust anyone, or this arc where most of his friends are dead or missing and Keiichi dies in a mental hospital of a heart attack, and the whole village is dead?)
Also, one thing Iāve noticed while playing the game myself is how much insight we get into Satoshi. We know from Watanagashi, Satoshi carried around a bat and got paranoid before he āleftā (no invoking Shionās wrath here!) the way Satoshi did, and Rena wanted to help him (or so she says, it could be K1ās delusion). Satoshi isnāt mentioned much in Watanagashi, and he goes back to being more relevant here, since heās Satokoās missing older brother. From Rika, we know that the two siblings were close and Satoko most likely managed the household chores (which makes sense, since itās Japan), and Satoshi most likely could not cook to save his life, and that Satoko adores him to where she addresses him in a cutesy way but is still strict with him. From Shion, we learn that Satoko is better than Satoshi at baseball, and that there are no records of his ātransferā. We know that Rena thinks itās Oyashiro-samaās curse that got Satoshi and Mion REALLY doesnāt like that being brought up. We know that Satoshi apparently called Mion around Watanagashi time come 1982, asking Mion to take her to the festival the way Keiichi does, and that Satoshi protected Satoko when they were being abused to the day of his disappearance. And that Keiichi thinks Satoshi is following him around. There sure is a lot of info about a character we havenāt met yet!
Oh, thanks! I completely forgot that he was mentioned during that little episode (god, Iād hate to be Keiichi on that ladder, as if being on a ladder wasnāt scary enough!).
So, we can deduce that Satoshi has a past with Satoko (obviously), but also with Mion for certain (possibly Shion!), and possibly Rena, if weāre to believe that she tried to help Satoshi before he vanished. The only one of the club before Keiichi who doesnāt seem to have a strong connection to Satoshi (in spite of telling K1 and the audience about him) is Rika. We could even argue that Keiichi, who has never physically met Satoshi in person, has a strong connection to Satoshi, especially in Tatarigoroshi and Onikakushi.
I canāt tell you how relieved I felt after hearing Keiichi say this. This is exactly what Iāve been wanting to hear him say since Onikakushi! Granted, yes, I want to indict him as an accomplice to murder, I also want to see him connect with his friends on a deeper level than just fun and games.
Now we approach the meat of this story, though. Keiichi is no longer the victim in this story. So far, it seems like heās going to be pushed to be the perpetrator. At least, at the point where I stopped reading, he seems hell-bent on murdering Teppei. But is that really his own intent? Perhaps someone else wants Teppei dead, and Keiichi, being the emotional hothead he is, is slowly being pushed towards that action. Yes, thatās right, Keiichi is being controlled by Oyashiro-sama!!!
Actually, no, thatās bullshit However, he could still be under control, albeit more subtly, by Satoko herself. Weāve received many hints throughout the daily life section; Satoko is brilliant at controlling peopleās actions. She can plan things out from the very beginning to push people towards where she wants them to go. In hindsight, everything could have been done to push Keiichi to this point. This includes her preparing dinner for him, calling him for the baseball game, calling him nii-nii, and going crazy in the classroom.
I donāt doubt that Teppei is the asshole that everyone sees him as. But Satoko might not be just complacent. She might actually want him dead, and not at her own hands. I definitely wouldnāt place it beneath her.
(if this gets revealed later in the novel, I will give a big, hearty laugh)
Iāve finished!! And it only took me two and a half weeks (which is much longer than my usual time. Curse the busy life of the working world). Iāve gone ahead and read the previous posts and, well, a lot of them are pretty good observations, but nobody seems to be giving much in terms of answers. So letās start Pepeās crazy theories corneeeer~
Takano killed Tomitake. @Funyarinpa closes in on this in a bit but drops the idea pretty quickly. But why the hell not? The game practically screams that she killed him. Especially her final line: āWe didnāt meet tonightā. She knows Keiichi killed someone. Keiichi knows she killed someone (and then denies it the next day). The two demons part for the night. We all know that Jirou was drugged to the point of scratching his neck out. Takano being a nurse, whose to say she didnāt have access to crazy drugs, especially in a village where crazy things happen.
There was never a āKeiichi Maebaraā in the Watanagashi. I have very strong conviction on this one, despite not having any proof. The moment Keiichi comes into class and is told that he went crazy the previous day in the festival by Mion, wellā¦ Things just clicked. I immediately thought āAwww, guys! You are such good friends, making a cover story for a guy who just killed someone to save another friend.ā But even though the game progresses and Keiichi starts to doubt their story more and more, I refuse to let go of my theory. And everything they say continues to make sense, in my eyes. Satoko never goes to the festival, so she cannot corroborate; Irie is too busy drinking and canāt confirm anything; and we donāt hear anything at all from the rest of the characters.
So I truly believe that āKeiichi participating in the Watanagashiā was a cover story made by true friends looking out for each other. And not only was it a cover story for anybody who askedā¦ It was a cover story for Keiichi himself. Why would they want to burden Keiichi with the sin of murder, when they can sweep it under the rug as a mere delusion? Unfortunately, Keiichi ends up way too pushy about his deed. However this brings up one big inconsistency, which goes to my next pointā¦
Satokoās uncle is dead. The entity tormenting Satoko after the festival is not her uncle. It took me a while to try and piece everything together here, but after reviewing everything, I did notice one thing: Satoko never openly admits that her uncle came home that night, nor does she admit that it was her uncle that put her in the bath. My biggest evidence for this is in one of the TIPS, the āRecord of Maliceā, where someone, who I assume to be Satoko, wonders āThis is the same thing the man who died said. Why does he know what that man said before?ā
I believe that this entire TIPS section coincides with her being trapped in the bathroom. āThe man who diedā here would be her uncle, and āheā would be some other entity, we have yet to learn. And, because Satoko believes those men to be possessed, she would view them with the same amount of fear. It is possible that āthe man who diedā was her stepfather, and āheā was actually the uncle, but based on the reports we heard of her stepfather, I donāt think the novel was making him out to be the kind of person to tell his stepdaughter āyou stinkā
Like @Funyarinpa theorizes, somebody dug up Teppeiās body. My evidence for this? This screenshot:
Considering that I had the conviction from my point #2 that Rena and Mion wanted to help cover Keiichiās ass, when I read this scene, I wondered āwhy is Rena so dead-set on asking for a bill? Or pushing keiichi to be with them in the afternoon?ā and my answer was simple: they wanted to give Keiichi an alibi for this afternoon. At first, I didnāt know why they would want that, but then I understood, once they failed to dig up Teppeiās body. They needed to be able to prove that Keiichi didnāt dispose of the body, while the other good folks of hinamizawa were doing just that. And how else, by making sure that Keiichi had an alibi.
The great Hinamizawa disaster. Running under the assumption that the previous games (Watanagashi, especially) donāt have this great disaster happening, then @Aspirety brings up a pretty good point:
Well, perhaps, and this is just a wild fantasy of mineā¦ Perhaps not pushing a running motorcycle, with multiple combustible components, into a swamp just waiting to explode with noxious gases, might actually prevent a disaster of that scale! gasp!
So, yes, I believe Keiichi caused the disaster, specifically by dumping Teppeiās motorcycle in the swamp. Keiichi, you idiot!
There are many more mysteries which I still fail to understand: Rikaās death, what happened to Satoshi, why Shion still committed suicide, and so on and so forthā¦ and I hope I can talk about it more with you guys~
Ohohohohoho!!!~~ I sure am glad to see new theories popping up!
I can see the āTakano had some crazy drugā argument, but honestly it feels like the game is trying to craft the illusion that Takano very obviously, very certainly killed Tomitake somehow so Iām really tempted to just dismiss the āTakano killed Tomitakeā theory based on its grounding. Going with it though, perhaps that ties into the drug in Onikakushi and Watanagashi arcs?
This was my exact conclusion at that point in the story. However, I feel like a few other people corroborated the very same idea of Keiichi being in Watanagashi, the mayor perhaps? Not sure on that though, and so Iām tempted to believe that it was indeed a cover-up attempt. However, I do have one single counterpoint. During the conversation in the classroom (where this plot point/mystery first shows up), one character mentions two particular acts Keiichi supposedly did at the Watanagashi: Shooting down a plush toy by lining up rifles and repeatedly shooting at it, and marketing the products sold in the stand. Why is this important? Because those two actions happened in previous arcs: Onikakushi and Watanagashi respectively. Would this character be able to make up something like Keiichiās detailed actions during the festival, especially when we know that those exact same actions occur under different circumstances? I feel like that couldnāt be made up. Thereās some āKeiichi entityā at Tatarigoroshiās festival, in my opinion (and this is my only strong reason right now ).
I feel I would need to review the particulars after Watanagashi to pick apart whether thereās really no explicit mention of Teppei being the entity that hurts Satoko, but I feel that thereās a glaring hole in this theory, in that we have practically no idea of who could be abusing Satoko instead. I do have one wild theory, thoughā¦ What if, in line with your constructing alibi theory, someone decided to go to Satokoās house and act like Satokoās uncle, just to obscure the fact that the actual Teppei is dead?
Thereās a TIP, if I recall correctly, where Ooishi wonders where Teppei went off to during the night of the Watanagashi. That also supports your theory that Teppei was actually dead.
ā¦
O_Oā¦
Edit: Oh, by the way, how exactly do we know that Shion committed suicide again, and does anyone remember where exactly it was implied that they had a relationship?
However, he could still be under control, albeit more subtly, by Satoko herself. Weāve received many hints throughout the daily life section; Satoko is brilliant at controlling peopleās actions. She can plan things out from the very beginning to push people towards where she wants them to go. In hindsight, everything could have been done to push Keiichi to this point. This includes her preparing dinner for him, calling him for the baseball game, calling him nii-nii, and going crazy in the classroom.
