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, couldn’t 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 “1500 seconds” 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 “group of friends” impression/ façade 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 Satoko’s abuse into Keiichi’s own breakdown, and that kind of lessened my enjoyment a bit since the middle third was a masterpiece of tragedy (like how Onikakushi’s latter half was a masterpiece of tension and horror) while the latter third just threw a lot into your face. And honestly the “Death wishes come true” 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 wouldn’t mesh with the answer of the mystery.
I also took a few pages’ worth of notes this time around (and the obsession to do that kind of hurt my engagement, lol) and I’d like to go over points, theories and questions to discuss.
Satoshi apparently disappeared a few days after Watanagashi. Doesn’t this contradict the whole “Onikakushi” concept? Didn’t Takano, the person to get "Onikakushi"d in Onikakushi, disappear right after Watanagashi?
Takano and what is -likely- Jirou’s 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 doesn’t connect as to how Takano would be complicit in his murder. She’s 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 she’d 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 “very average” car’s license plate check which could very well be hers) could be spun for both ways of the “Takano really died/Takano is alive” argument, though. As for the bike, by Takano’s own words, “It makes no sense for Tomitake and his bike to be separate in Hinamizawa”- as there’s nowhere for him to stay in Hinamizawa and he’d 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 don’t, but it feels like too obvious a conclusion to draw.
Takano’s 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?
Satoshi’s 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 Satoko’s foster parents. I have a hunch that the person who spent time with the others during the festival was actually Satoshi, but I can’t 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 Keiichi’s theory that Satoshi killed Satoko’s aunt is true, that Satoshi was actually carrying the bat in order to prepare for killing his own aunt? Mion confusing Keiichi’s voice for Satoshi’s also seems to point to me that the two are very similar.
I think that Keiichi couldn’t 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 don’t know if it’d 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 Satoko’s 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. I’m certain that Keiichi killed someone else in his hysteria and bloodlust, though- his unhingedness really shines through (the talk of “not having a beginning to the mystery” despite begging for Mion to kill Satoko’s 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 is…
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 “missing” 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 “finding himself on a dismantled car seat” is very curious info… That car seat could belong to Ooishi’s car (for all we know he just lost his car) or Takano’s.
Irie’s death: We don’t know if he was force-fed the pills…
Re: the “1500 Seconds” rant: Everyone said that Keiichi’s eyes got weird… 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.
That’s all I have on my mind for now, but I’d love to hear your opinions about Tatarigoroshi’s mysteries!
Edit: Also, I think that the loud “boom” sound you get with the Higurashi logo at the very end of every arc signifies the Hinamizawa Disaster- which means that Keiichi just isn’t 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 “1500 seconds” 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 Rika’a very own watanagashi.
First time posting, let me know if I’m doing anything wrong, but here it goes. Full Tatarigoroshi spoilers ahead.
I’m 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 “they’re probably just Keiichi going insane or hallucinating”, specially with the whole Disaster ending.
So far, from the previous two entries, I’m very much aligned with the “the crimes are being perpetrated by people” 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. That’s my reasoning for dismissing it as not actually happening.
Maybe I’m just picking over a minute detail, but Takano mentions that she can’t put Keiichi’s bike on the trunk of her car since it’s full. That’s also why she has Tomitake’s 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 she’s saying: Tomitake isn’t 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 Satoshi’s disappearance with the assault on Satoko’s aunt. I felt this reveal was pretty weak, since I figure many readers will have made the connection much earlier, and it’s always frustrating to realize things way before the main character, only for them to play it out as a big reveal.
The eyes during Keiichi’s 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 wasn’t Shion on the phone, or rather Mion, who also had a theme of being possessed by an Oni-like entity. Again, maybe I’m grasping at straws, but it could very well be the moment Keiichi becomes “possessed” by this other personality that drives him into a murderous state.
Another throwback was the presence of the footsteps, although I believe this one isn’t 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, it’s probably unrelated.
The character of Coach I believe ties in very well with the “chief” that Rena and Mion call in the ending of the first chapter, or at least that’s the impression I get. He works in the clinic, too, which could explain why he has access to the drug.
Finally, Rika’s murder. I don’t 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 can’t imagine why she would do it this time around, though.
EDIT:
One last thing I forgot to mention, is that it’s interesting how much Ooishi acts differently to Keiichi relative to the other arcs. Sure, he was manipulative before, but he’s an outright asshole this time around.
The fact that he mentions he was expecting Satoko’s uncle to get killed, was keeping watch on his house and yet he didn’t follow him when he left is also very suspicious.
Hey guys, sorry I’m late! Just finished reading Tatarigoroshi for the Tea Party last night, and boy do I love this chapter! It’s a hell of a ride, expanding on some of the themes of Onikakushi but also doing it’s own thing. Anyway, let me start by responding to people.
As far as I’m aware, the Onikakushis don’t always follow immediately after the initial killings. There’s sometimes delay between them.
Are we sure that she wasn’t burned in Onikakushi? Maybe it just wasn’t shown?
Well they didn’t ‘bury a drainage pipe’, the drainage pipe just happened to be under where Keiichi dug. This is definitely the biggest mystery of the chapter to me, but I can’t 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.
What’s really interesting to me is that we never see Teppei after he’s ‘killed’. The writing and Satako’s testimony certainly leads us to believe he’s still around, but then there was also the point that Ooishi couldn’t track down his whereabouts during one of the TIPS where Tomitake and Takano’s 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 he’s completely sane that you really need to think hard about what’s going on here. Keiichi couldn’t comprehend it, so he reached the conclusion that “It’s Watanagashi that’s crazy, not me”. 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 can’t say the same for Onikakushi, but isn’t that weird?
This All-Cast review session introduced the idea that all the Chapters are like different ‘routes’ 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 ‘manager’ used in Onikakushi is identical to the term used here for ‘coach’: 監督 or kantoku means both these things. And yes, that’s what they’re 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 happened…
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 Keiichi’s theory. But then, Irie did apparently commit suicide, and Ooishi apparently disappared, but did he? When I read that chapter I read “still looking for Ooishi’s car” as looking for the car he reported, however… The credit role says he really did disappear? Odd. Again, this is something which didn’t happen in Watanagashi. And then, there’s also the way you can connect Rika’s death to the natural disaster, but I dunno, that’s a very supernatural explanation itself, we’re 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 it’s 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 we’re not living in constant paranoia that we and everyone we love is gonna die).
There’s also those footsteps coming back. First Keiichi feeling like there’s someone following him, then Shion complaining about footsteps in the storehouse, now back to Keiichi hearing footsteps everywhere… Popular theory seems to suggest it’s the ghost of Satoshi right now. ~Spooky~
Rena’s 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.
I’ll come back to this if there’s anything else I remember to bring up, but god I love this chapter, fuck the haters. The later scenes of the ‘twisted world’ don’t make the drama of Satoko any less meaningful. If anything, seeing Keiichi driven to that point is tragic in it’s own way, assuming he’s 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 I’ll assume was added either in Hou or by Mangagamer themselves). Can anyone shed light on this? Was Himatsubushi a last-minute decision?
I mean, it’s 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 I’m just through the first 4 chapters of this chapter (chapterception) and am enjoying it quite a bit! I guess I’ve 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 “food porn” 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 is… well… weird. So apparently the start of chapter 2 takes place after Keiichi mistakes Mion for Shion and goes on a date with Shion? Wouldn’t that just push the events of chapter 2 all over again? I mean, of course it won’t in this chapter, but… Where exactly does each chapter diverge in the storyline?
And lastly, and this is just a crazy theory, but I’m starting to think that Satoko’s traps in the mountain may have one thing or another to do with this whole “Oyashiro-sama” curse thing. Not pushing this theory, but if it happens to be true, I wouldn’t be surprised – is all I’m 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 we’re 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.
Hmm…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, it’s 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 there’s no school. So if we look at the ‘Sunday before the Watanagashi festival’ in both arcs, we see that in Watanagashi, it’s the game tournament at the toy shop, and in Tatarigoroshi, it’s 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, Tatarigoroshi’s 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 doesn’t join the club until AFTER he comes back from the city, and in these two arcs, he’s 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 doesn’t 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 I’ve 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 “left” (no invoking Shion’s wrath here!) the way Satoshi did, and Rena wanted to help him (or so she says, it could be K1’s delusion). Satoshi isn’t mentioned much in Watanagashi, and he goes back to being more relevant here, since he’s Satoko’s 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 it’s 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 “transfer”. We know that Rena thinks it’s Oyashiro-sama’s curse that got Satoshi and Mion REALLY doesn’t 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 haven’t met yet!
Oh, thanks! I completely forgot that he was mentioned during that little episode (god, I’d hate to be Keiichi on that ladder, as if being on a ladder wasn’t 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 we’re to believe that she tried to help Satoshi before he vanished. The only one of the club before Keiichi who doesn’t 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 can’t tell you how relieved I felt after hearing Keiichi say this. This is exactly what I’ve 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 he’s 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, that’s right, Keiichi is being controlled by Oyashiro-sama!!!
Actually, no, that’s bullshit However, he could still be under control, albeit more subtly, by Satoko herself. We’ve received many hints throughout the daily life section; Satoko is brilliant at controlling people’s 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 don’t 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 wouldn’t place it beneath her.
(if this gets revealed later in the novel, I will give a big, hearty laugh)
I’ve 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). I’ve 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 let’s start Pepe’s 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: “We didn’t meet tonight”. 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 didn’t have access to crazy drugs, especially in a village where crazy things happen.
There was never a “Keiichi Maebara” 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, well… Things just clicked. I immediately thought “Awww, guys! You are such good friends, making a cover story for a guy who just killed someone to save another friend.” 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 can’t confirm anything; and we don’t hear anything at all from the rest of the characters.
So I truly believe that “Keiichi participating in the Watanagashi” was a cover story made by true friends looking out for each other. And not only was it a cover story for anybody who asked… 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 point…
Satoko’s 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 “Record of Malice”, where someone, who I assume to be Satoko, wonders “This is the same thing the man who died said. Why does he know what that man said before?”
I believe that this entire TIPS section coincides with her being trapped in the bathroom. “The man who died” here would be her uncle, and “he” 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 “the man who died” was her stepfather, and “he” was actually the uncle, but based on the reports we heard of her stepfather, I don’t think the novel was making him out to be the kind of person to tell his stepdaughter “you stink”
Like @Funyarinpa theorizes, somebody dug up Teppei’s 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 Keiichi’s ass, when I read this scene, I wondered “why is Rena so dead-set on asking for a bill? Or pushing keiichi to be with them in the afternoon?” and my answer was simple: they wanted to give Keiichi an alibi for this afternoon. At first, I didn’t know why they would want that, but then I understood, once they failed to dig up Teppei’s body. They needed to be able to prove that Keiichi didn’t 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) don’t have this great disaster happening, then @Aspirety brings up a pretty good point:
Well, perhaps, and this is just a wild fantasy of mine… 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 Teppei’s motorcycle in the swamp. Keiichi, you idiot!
There are many more mysteries which I still fail to understand: Rika’s death, what happened to Satoshi, why Shion still committed suicide, and so on and so forth… 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 “Takano had some crazy drug” argument, but honestly it feels like the game is trying to craft the illusion that Takano very obviously, very certainly killed Tomitake somehow so I’m really tempted to just dismiss the “Takano killed Tomitake” 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 I’m 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 Keiichi’s detailed actions during the festival, especially when we know that those exact same actions occur under different circumstances? I feel like that couldn’t be made up. There’s some “Keiichi entity” at Tatarigoroshi’s 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 there’s really no explicit mention of Teppei being the entity that hurts Satoko, but I feel that there’s 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, though… What if, in line with your constructing alibi theory, someone decided to go to Satoko’s house and act like Satoko’s uncle, just to obscure the fact that the actual Teppei is dead?
There’s 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.
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O_O…
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. We’ve received many hints throughout the daily life section; Satoko is brilliant at controlling people’s 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.
