All fair arguments, none of which I have counter-arguments against. The most interesring one of which is that against #2: indeed, how did they make up exactly what happened in the previous games? It seems too hard to call it coincidence, so it makes me wonder… What exactly connects all these games together?
The game stated she committed suicide in the ending credits (where it said the status of all the characters), and the game implied they had a relationship at the end of the bbq party; coach said something about satoshi leaving behind such a pretty girlfriend, and shion gets all flustered about it.
(For that reason, I also believe that the person Keiichi talks to on the phone and tells to bring Satoko to the festival was actually Shion but, again, I have no evidence)
It’s worth noting that Ooishi isn’t really acting all that out of the ordinary for a cop.
Having actually been detained before by cops mistakenly suspected me and my mother for a shooting (they later admitted it was a neighbor playing with fireworks. Yeesh!), any cop with probable cause can bust down your door and hold you at gunpoint.
Keiichi was saying really weird things in this route. It wouldn’t be odd if someone reported him as suspicious.
Now that there will be a bit of hiatus until the rest of Umineko comes out though Steam, I feel like now’s a great time to go back to Higurashi!
Anyway, as for my thoughts on the actual arc. At this point in the story, Keiichi seemed extremely suspicious to me. I think a big part of that is because like in Onikakushi, there are a lot of comparisons made between Keiichi and Satoshi. Almost as if, they are the same person.
Yeah, Keiichi was a highly suspicious character/narrator this time around, I think, and not just for killing someone. After all, we see the “Watanagashi paradox” and the “Teppei paradox” from his perspective. To account for a possibly unreliable narrator, I’ll take a viewpoint of subjectivity: we know Keiichi experienced killing Teppei, but it appears that Satoko may not have experienced the desired result of Keiichi’s act.
Comparisons of Keiichi to Satoshi are indeed a big thing this arc, more so than in Onikakushi-hen. This is the first time I noticed Keiichi also contrasting himself to Satoshi, pointing out that he can’t be a perfect substitute.
“Record of Malice” is an interesting piece of the story, and it’s made even more intriguing by its mention at the end of someone apologizing, another possible parallel with Onikakushi.
“Emergency”, another of the TIPS, made me curious the first time about whether some other authority might try to get involved with Satoko’s situation. Looking over it again, it’s a bit more interesting as I now notice that it mentions manic depression, which was brought up (by Ooishi if memory serves me right) in Onikakushi.
I was quite confused the first time around about the mention of the curry-making contest, considering it happened in a different arc. Looking at the interpretations here, it might be the case that it happened in both, but if Tatarigorishi starts later than Watanagashi I’ll have to check the timing. This could tie, one way or another, into the “Watanagashi paradox”, since as mentioned above, the actions ascribed to Keiichi match up with those taken in earlier arcs.
Thanks to my compulsive screenshot-taking, I was able to reconstruct the obfuscated text in the Great Hinamizawa Disaster In Memoriam List. Does the content of it count as a spoiler?
Alright, I have read the first four chapters within this chapter, and judging by Keiichi’s thoughts at the end of it, this is a good spot to start talking.
I think overall, this one had a stronger start than the previous two, and I think it had more emotional weight within it.
As I expected going in, this is Satoko’s chapter so far, and it’s rather humanizing compared to the earlier parts of the last two. I think it’s very nice to see a more positive relationship between her and Keiichi develop. He goes to bat for her( in one case, literally…) some and I like that a lot.
The scene in the bathroom was slightly disturbing…
I’m going to call it now: Shion was interested in Satoshi romantically. I’m probably not even close to the first person to guess this, but it seems quite probable to me. It would also fit into the Keiichi/Satoshi narrative a bit.
I was certainly surprised to learn that single people in Japan are not allowed to adopt. Irie feels like a more matured Keiichi in a way: He still has some…typical Hinamizawa male traits, but overall he’s likable and mature.
Between the Satoshi plotline and Rena’s outburst, it seems some of the plot threads from Onikakushi might be coming back. I wonder what the nature of Mion and Rena’s relationship is, given the diversity of their interactions to this point…
Oddly, we haven’t met Tomitake-san. Since the beginning of the chapter proclaimed this to be the shortest scenario, I wonder if the narrative is about to diverge there.
So before I go into Chapter 7, I suppose I’ll talk about 5 and 6.
Well, Keiichi’s worry seems to have manifested strongly, though there’s no logical thread suggesting it was because of his actions.
Ooishi’s character may or may not have been turned on it’s head: the last two chapters suggest him as being possibly the least believing in the curse of anyone we’ve met so far, but now the possibility has been put out there that he may be akin to it’s herald. He’s also being portrayed in an increasingly negative light.
We saw Irie go from 0 to 100 in these chapters, like a short term Chekhov’s Gunman. His and Keiichi’s thoughts, feelings and words are among the best of Ryukishi’s writing I’ve seen yet, and honestly I feel more respect for him now. He certainly seems to have a lot to say on abuse.
Keiichi’s own behavior is worth discussing as well. He really laid into Mion, unfairly so. It was certainly strange to see Mion to utterly on the defensive from him after the last episode(that’s what I’m going to start calling named chunks of the series in order to prevent confusion with chapters within them). Rena’s response to his tirade seems to combine her “personas” as it were.
But through the rest of this, we also see a much more devoted Keiichi, one that’s at his most caring point yet. It contrasts with his almost tone-deaf interactions with Mion in the last episode.
Also good lord, poor Satoko’s face at a couple of times within these chapters…
We still haven’t run into Tomitake and Takano.
(from this point forward, anything in the post was not at it’s original point)
So I’ve finished the chapter, barring some of the tips.
I’m in agreement that the last section maybe wasn’t as enjoyable as the earlier stuff? But it’s not unjustified.
Certainly the end of this chapter seems to throw the pendulum over to the curse side, as if acknowledging that the viewer wasn’t convinced after last chapter.
Certainly the mystery deepened in this chapter: There’s a lot to think about
Also wow, I’m excited that we’re getting a chapter from Shion’s perspective.
I may edit this again if I come up with something else.
Hmm, where to start for this one? It’s honestly pretty hard. On one hand, I of course want to talk about Tatarigoroshi’s mysteries, but on the other hand, I also want to talk about the preceding mysteries from Onikakushi and Watanagashi again. So you see, it’s hard to find a starting point. I think I’m going to start with Tatarigoroshi, but with a casual reaction I had to certain lines.
Here I was honestly curious: How were laws about alcohol and drugs in the eighties? Because for me this was a big no-no, as I was raised in a country where it is illegal to sell these things to minors. So were laws more lenient in the 80ies in Japan? I’d love if someone could tell me that.
But now for the incidents that happened. Let’s start chronologically. So first off, Keiichi killing (?) Teppei and someone killing Tomitake (again). I personally believe that Keiichi did indeed kill at least someone, probably Teppei. As for Tomitake, I feel like he was killed by Takano, I’ll go into more detail with this one when I start from the very beginning. Then we get to the first true mystery: Keiichi supposedly also was at the Watanagashi. Here I’m leaning towards his friends covering for him, like @Pepe also suggested. The way he asked about this day, I could see this as a lie that is gradually build on by everyone. And Keiichi was making it easy: For instance, he was asking I think Mion when he went to the festival, where the others met him. They answered him that he was talking to Rika. Then he asked Rika. But instead of asking where she met him, he asks if what the others said is correct. Which makes it very easy for Rika to just say yes without getting into any contradictions.
Next mystery, Takano’s death. We had this in Watanagashi already, it’s somewhat likely that she faked her death.
After that, the disappearance of the body. I don’t really have anything on this one in particular, so I’m going with the idea of Rena and Mion covering even more for Kei-chan for now.
Then, Coach’s death and Ooishi’s disappearance. Here my answer is, for Coach, maybe he had a deep connection to one of the victims he learned on the day before and it actually was suicide. For Ooishi, are we certain that he really was missing already?
After that, Rika was found dead. This honestly is another one I’m clueless about.
Going on from here,
@Pepe sadly was faster and had the same idea here, but I also think that throwing that bike into the swamp is not the brightest move Keiichi could have done.
Of course, this still leaves the question of how Keiichi survived that incident if he supposedly shouldn’t have been able to. To be perfectly honest, I got nothing on this one.
Last but not least, Keiichi foretelling so many deaths: Well, this one’s simple: Superstition. All of these just lucky coincidences.
Now we get to the really interesting stuff. And I’m going to go in order. So first off, the dismemberment. This I just see as a homicide that just happened to happen on Watanagashi. If it was actually planned, then the date of Watanagashi is also useful since most inhabitants go to the festival, which lowers the chance of being witnessed.
For the incident in the next year, I’m going to pull up a quote from this thread first:
I fully agree with Satoko being brilliant at controlling people and I see the possibility of her subtly bringing Keiichi to kill her uncle. However, I’m going to go a step farther: What if she also planned to kill her parents? We know she didn’t like her father, maybe she started to dislike her mother too, maybe not, either way, I’m proposing the possibility that the fence that broke and doomed her parents might have been one of Satoko’s traps. Another point for this theory is the knowledge that at this point in time, Satoko’s traps were reportedly more dangerous.
The next year, Rika’s parents died. While I had the idea to trace several of the past incidents to Satoko before, this one I had the hardest time while reading, as there really wasn’t any connection to her. Then the end of Tatarigoroshi happened. Satoko told quite an interesting story. One where her friend Rika was punished by Rika’s father. Satoko described it as Rika getting beaten. Suddenly, Satoko had a motive to kill Rika’s parents. We know that Rika’s father died of an unknown illness (some kind of poison or drug? Was Rika even an accomplice?). After his death, it is very possible that Satoko just maybe pushed Rika’s mother a little bit to act according to the town’s believes and drown herself in the swamp. Overall, Satoko’s involvement with Rika’s mother’s death is not necessary though.
Next year, and it was the turn for Satoko’s aunt. Here I’m inclined to say that it was indeed Satoshi who killed her. Maybe he was manipulated by Satoko in a similar way she manipulated Kei-chan in the following year, maybe not, who knows.
And then, we have the year 1983, where in each story Tomitake dies and Takano disappears. I glanced over that before, but basically I’m saying that Takano planned to kill Tomitake for whatever reason. But since she’s an adult, her plan is a lot more thought out. Her researching Oyashiro-sama’s curse, her breaking into the storehouse, all that was planned so that Tomitake’s death and her disappearance is easily going to be attributed to the curse. Sadly, we don’t know enough about both to really get an idea on what her motive might have been.
Now, after this point the story heavily branches. So, first,
Onikakushi
Here, we only have Keiichi first killing Mion and Rena and then himself. It is very possible that he misunderstood the situation and his friends were honestly worryingabout him, asked the Coach, who is a doctor, for help, he gave them a sedative and said he’d come later, and well, that escalated. For Keiichi clawing his throat out, I’m saying that he was at such a state of panic at this point that he had such difficulty to breath that he clawed at his throat, trying to get more air, just sadly with the opposite effect.
And second,
Watanagashi
My theory here is that the second half of Mion’s confession is correct, that she did indeed torture and kill Rika and Satoko, old man Kimiyoshi and her grandma. However, her admitting to the previous years’ incidents is her covering for both Satoko and Satoshi, my assumption being that at least she knew who really was behind those incidents. The other mystery solutions are pretty much the same as in the Watanagashi thread.
Now an answer to another person that doesn’t really fit anywhere else, and a thought I was playing around with.
This quote was talking about Ooishi. It was already mentioned in Onikakushi that he is seen as Oyashiro-sama’s messenger by the villagers.
I actually entertained the thought “What if Keiichi and Satoshi actually are the same person?” First, there would be the question why Keiichi doesn’t realize. To this I’d guess that Satoshi unconciously made himself a new personality a short time after killing his aunt. Murder is traumatizing, and with my reasoning above this would be his first murder. Of course, there’s the glaringly huge problem of Keiichi’s parents. After all, if he’d be the same person, they shouldn’t exist, but we hear too much about them that them not existing is simply too unlikely. Then I got an idea that is admittedly out of thin air, but it’s an idea nevertheless. What if the real Keiichi died some time ago, his parents saw Satoshi, maybe he even looked similar to Keiichi, and thus decided to pretend that this boy is Keiichi. The only “hint” for that really is Onikakushi’s opening in that train, maybe this was the day the three met. Well, anyway, this is my crazy crapshoot theory for the day, it is definitely an entertaining thought.
Man I’d forgotten how heartwarming the early Keiichi-Satoko-scenes are. They go a long way in building up the investment to have the middle part of the story hit as hard as it does.
My counterargument for this might kind of be cheating, (this is vague and not exactly a spoiler but you might not want to know, best to see after reading all question arcs) but in the PS3 graphics there are a couple CGs where you can see Keiichi and I believe his hair color is different than Satoshi’s.
Tatarigoroshi has definitely been the most thrilling of the chapters I’ve read, so much so that I felt emotionally inclined not to finish it for a while. This chapter is a testament to Ryukishi’s skill in making me care for a character in a seemingly small amount of time, to the point where the development of said character had a personal effect on my life. Poor Satoko…
Anyway, my impressions of the story are that despite it not being all that scary, it’s still incredibly suspenseful. Although many of the initial interactions were comical in nature, there is always something poking at the back of your head, telling you something is wrong. Of course, that might be from the fact that you know by this point that some people are going to die, you just don’t know who (besides Tomitake and Takano, of course). Naturally, Ryukishi plays with this by making everyone die, including people who had nothing to do with the initial murders. Or were they…?
Honestly, the whole idea of Keiichi being crazy had settled into my head right from the start. I mean, the guy nearly set fire to his parents’ house. It’s perfectly likely that Keiichi has been unreliable and powerless from the beginning. Whatever murder he caused, it actually made him less useful in solving the grand scheme of things. So what’s with all the strings of coincidental murders?
Well, let’s look at things from the beginning. Not the first murder, but the first suspects.
We already know that Satoko is a master of traps and escape routes. She is a known liar, and has shown symptoms of depression and neurosis, which don’t sound too serious.
Ooishi is known to have known all the people who were killed in the Watanagashi killings.
Takano disregards Keiichi’s murder as something akin to a child stealing a toy from a store. To make things even more interesting, she seems to be the only person (aside from characters introduced in this story) that Keiichi doesn’t recognize from the start.
Mion (or Shion?) practically lied to Keiichi’s face in this story in a similar fashion to what happened in Watanagashi. She does, however, openly admit to not liking outsiders.
These four are my biggest suspects, not discounting Rena from previous chapters for reasons I will disclose later. Now to talk about the elephant in the room: ‘Keiichi Maebara’.
The sudden appearance of a doppelganger, as Irie calls it, actually doesn’t lead me to believe that Keiichi isn’t any more unreliable than he already is. My belief is that the appearance of a fake Keiichi is actually a mercy granted by Mion (or perhaps the village as a whole) to cover Keiichi’s tracks, although the exact reason as to why that would be escapes me. My theory is that since Mion (or perhaps Shion?) was the only one who knew about Keiichi being absent from the festival, she might have deduced that he was going to do the same thing Satoshi did. So, as his friend, she did her best to protect him from the punishment he might receive if he were to be caught.
In fact, that’s pretty much what Irie tried to do when Keiichi visited the clinic, even if Keiichi thought it was an act of betrayal. It goes to show that those that Keiichi’s once-called friends still care for him despite whatever he might have done. In fact, that’s actually been pretty consistent in all the chapters so far.
Speaking of consistencies, the All-Cast Review Session made an effort to point out many of the persistent facts that exist within all the chapters. Here’s a list for my own (and anyone else’s) reference:
The personalities and motivations of characters; Rena is still what she is in Onikakushi and Watanagashi (hence why she’s still a suspect in my eyes), Mion and Shion are still what they are in Watanagashi, and Satoko will always be what she is in this episode.
The fates of certain characters; Tomitake and Takano sneak into the shrine storage during the festival, and die in exactly the same way and in the same place.
The catalyst of the events of each episode is different; the doll in Watanagashi and the return of Satoko’s uncle in Tatarigoroshi are prime examples. Ooishi’s appearance in Onikakushi may count as well.
Although it is never mentioned in the previous episodes, the natural disaster that kills everyone in Hinamizawa. Assuming anybody lives to really see it, does it still happen as it does in this chapter? Or was it something that Keiichi did that caused it, such as tossing the moped and Satoshi’s bat into the swamp?
A minor example: the events of the festival in Onikakushi taking place as if nothing else had happened while the real Keiichi was out killing Teppei Houjou.
*Another minor example pointed out in the Review Session: Angel Mort; Shion is still an employee there, and it is pretty much a central hub of hijinks for the main characters.
One more theory before I wrap up, I promise this is the last one. The reporter meeting up with Keiichi at the end may be the same guy who covered for Keiichi at the festival. It sounds like a bit of a stretch, but there is evidence. Most people may have disregarded it before, but Keiichi died two days after the interview was conducted. If what Irie said about doppelgangers is true, then this could mean that the reporter was an integral piece in keeping Keiichi’s ‘perfect crime’ together. Considering the reporter used forceful methods to get an interview in, he may have been allied with whomever was left of the Sonozaki family. It didn’t matter what Keiichi said or how the recording turned out, only that it perpetuate the curse of Oyashiro-sama and the legacy of Hinamizawa, and it worked out beautifully, at the cost of the reporter’s life.
Whew, that was a chapter. Hopefully all that made sense, because I’m carrying all of it with me to Himatsubushi and Meakashi, assuming I can catch up with the current Tea Party. It’s rather heartbreaking that I missed the chance to be a part of this chapter’s Tea Party, but I don’t regret reading this far.
