I’m not saying that the Queen Carrier hypothesis is necessarily true (and it’s definitely at least somewhat false), but the belief in it is why everyone in Hinamizawa was murdered when Rika died.
But not everybody dies in Watanagashi even though Rika was killed.
That’s because the Yamainu couldn’t get permission to gas the villagers if Rika was just missing, rather than dead. And by the time her body was found, it was 48+ hours after her death.The theory was that the villagers would go mad within 48 hours after Rika died. But this was proven wrong, so the plan to gas the villagers wasn’t carried out.
Therefore the queen carrier hypothesis is bullshit?
It doesn’t entirely seem to bullshit. After all, apparently the virus is different in Rika than in other people, and the ‘cure’ was created from her.
My guess would also be that Rika can probably never develop high levels of the syndrome, although it never really says one way or the other.
Takano is pretty easy to pin down as being someone likely to be the culprit (especially in Tatarigoroshi due to her BEING ALIVE AND HELPING KEIICHI GET HOME WHEN SHE’S SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD ACCORDING TO HER PLAN, but luckily for her, Keiichi really wasn’t willing to investigate it, and y’know the whole body dead for a day before the festival). And her appearances in the Answer arcs up to Minagoroshi only further make Takano suspicious (what with giving Shion and Rena notebooks about her research on the village), so a reader with a keen eye will at least probably figure out that Takano is up to some shady stuff like probably killing Tomitake since she has his bike. We just can’t pin Takano’s motives until the final arcs. The Yamainu show up in Onikakushi as the people in the van that nearly ran Keiichi over (and the people who punch Keiichi when he’s running from Rena), but they don’t come back into much of a focus until Tsumihoroboshi, where Rena (correctly) guesses that the Yamainu are following her and keeping tabs on her, and they hang around the school under the guise of being gardeners. We don’t know they’re even called the Yamainu or that they’re really connected to Takano until Minagoroshi (but can assume they’re connected to the mastermind) spells it out, though. We can guess the various stages of the Syndrome, since we’ve had it from many first person experiences, seen it second hand (in the case of Satoko in Tatarigoroshi, Satoshi in Meakashi, and Rena in Tsumihoroboshi’s school takeover scenes), and seen what it’s done, but we can’t put a name to it. And we know that Oyashiro-sama is the “extra footstep”, and that people who are incredibly unstable can hear Oyashiro-sama’s steps and even hear Hanyuu apologizing (Keiichi hears her at the start of Onikakushi as he returns back, and Rena’s heard her before).
So, while we can’t discern motive, the names of the Yamainu and the Syndrome, and just who/what Oyashiro-sama is besides the local deity, we can discern those facts with everything up to Tsumihoroboshi.
Actually, the Yamainu are mentioned by name in Tatarigoroshi. Irie asks what staff are on site at the clinic to help subdue Keiichi, and the doctor responds “One Yamainu (Mountain Dog in the new TL)”. So it’s possible to determine the name of the organisation from this; it is a pretty unusual term after all.
The one thing I can’t buy yet is this:
How are we meant to conclude that? I’m also pretty sure that many of the readers are actively trying to avoid supernatural answers since it’s very anti-mystery, heh.
Oh, I completely forgot that! So it is possible to determine that the Yamainu/Mountain Dogs are some sorta organization in white vans up to no good way before they’re confirmed as such!
I wonder if it is possible to have an anti-fantasy answer for Higurashi at all, since a lot of it, especially Matsuribayashi, runs on shonen and magic, unless one were to say that Hanyuu is ultimate personification of HS like I’ve heard that the new Hou arcs seem to imply?
I really ought to re-read Higurashi’s later arcs again, as I can’t remember if it’s discussed in Minagoroshi or in Matsuribayashi about Oyashiro-sama being the extra footstep. We can at least be sure that Hanyuu tends to follow people well into the late stages of the Syndrome from time to time, since it’s said somewhere in those two arcs that Hanyuu tended to do that (which could open up a lot of things about why Hanyuu didn’t utilize that fully). I know in Rena’s flashback to her suicide attempt in Tsumihoroboshi, she’s said that when she nearly succeeded, she heard Oyashiro-sama’s voice calling her back to the village (assuming it IS Hanyuu, because if it is, dang, Hanyuu has some range to go all the way to Ibaraki), and in Onikakushi, Ooishi said that when he was digging up Rena’s past, he found that Rena mentioned being watched by Oyashiro-sama in her sleep in her records with whatever doctor she was seeing, and there were mentions of forgiveness. (Though to be fair, since Rena is an Oyashiro zealot, it isn’t exactly reliable proof of Hanyuu following people).
As for Keiichi hearing Hanyuu at the start, Keiichi’s on the train back to Hinamizawa and states that he’s been hearing a female voice apologize over and over again, and it annoys him, leading him to say in his narration that he believes that everything is forgivable and if she can’t fix what’s been done, it’s all the more reason to forgive her. She also kind of appears later on when Rena’s outside Keiichi’s window, where it;s been stated (somewhere, I’ve only seen it confirmed on the wiki and I forget if it’s confirmed in later arcs, so it might not be correct after all), and Keiichi thinks he sees Rena apologizing, but hears “I’m sorry” repeatedly (and Ooishi is rightly weirded out on the other line).
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Well, I don’t think you could have an anti-fantasy answer for all of Higurashi, but I actually do have an alternate explanation for the footsteps.
If I remember correctly, it’s never outright stated that Hanyuu is the one causing the footsteps. It’s just sort of implied when Rika makes an offhand comment in Minagoroshi about how Hanyuu likes to follow people around. But it’s not like she would only be able to follow people around at point-blank range.
Also, in one of the Onikakushi-hen TIPs, Keiichi describes the footsteps as sounding like bare feet. You could just say that maybe he was wrong…but it seems unlikely that he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between bare feet and geta of all things. Especially since he’s in a store at the time.
Then there’s Rika’s description of Hanyuu in the light novel version of Minagoroshi-hen. She describes Hanyuu as a being that floats around. Why would Hanyuu go to the trouble of walking any great distance when she can float?
So if the footsteps/presence aren’t Hanyuu, then what are they? I tend to think of the footsteps/presence as a sort of shadow-self, born from the Syndrome (or at least given substance by it). Sort of how it’s presented in Satoshi’s chapters in Matsuribayashi. Anyway, I kind of like this because you can think of it as something supernatural, or all in the person’s head.
But there are also times when it’s Hanyuu without a doubt. The banging sound in the Saiguden in Watanagashi-hen and Meakashi-hen is definitely Hanyuu, for instance, as is the presence that Keiichi attacks in Onikakushi-hen. Hanyuu is the one making the repeated apologies as well.
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Interesting, so the footsteps might not be Hanyuu at all? I like this theory.
Now it opens up a whole new theory that might open up for some scary stuff like the question “If it isn’t Hanyuu following people… then what or who is following people and causing that extra footstep?” Paranoia?
Alternatively, Satoshi’s comatose spirit following these guys and the paranoid were right? Maybe one of the characters revealed in Kaku/Outbreak?
umineko only has those knox rules because beatrice wanted it to be, higurashi though has no obligation nor is the creator of it interested in that type of stuff.
like van dine has rules that are used to determine if the story can be considered mystery, but it doesnt apply or works in umineko.
So, does anybody have an info or theories on the timeline of the arcs? I’m wondering whether they’re meant to be general representations of some of the most commonly occuring scenarios, random ones throughout Rika’s lifespan or directly in succession of one another chronogically for her? We know that the latter is the case for Tsumihoroboshi, Minagoroshi and Matsuribayashi of course so it’s easy to assume the same goes for the others, but especially for the question arcs, it’d be interesting to consider whether that’s not the case. Though Rika kills herself in Meakashi seemingly directly in response to the events of Watanagashi, she later talks of the events of those arcs as though they’re fairly common occurences. It’s really interesting to me to think about whether there really were main routes the events tended to fall into or if they could differ quite drastically from world to world and whether there were a large number of possibilities for what happened.
“General representations of some of the most commonly occurring scenarios” would be my best guess. They’re definitely not chronological (or at least, Himatsubushi definitely didn’t occur “recently,” because Minagoroshi is the first time Rika has seen Akasaka in decades).
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I second Isae, too, they are probably not chronological, though there’s not really any evidence that proves it or its opposite, anyways. I suppose what you’re saying about events differing form world to world is somewhat implied in the series too, and yes, I also suppose that some worlds not shown to us may have had drastic differences, yes. But the worlds that give the clues as to what’s really going on and have some of the characters that are related closely to the plot or to certain events certainly are the most important ones to show, which is what has been shown to us. There could be some side stories or something, describing a world with a completely new chain of events, though I guess except for maybe expanding some more some of the characters who haven’t been the protagonist for any of the arcs, they wouldn’t offer much clues to what’s really going on.
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Does anyone know where to find all the Alchemist CGs for Higurashi? The Umineko ones are very easy to find, but the Higurashi ones are a bit difficult to scout out.
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I found this site a long time ago that lets you manually patch the backgrounds/character sprites from the originals to the PS2 ones.
I have a question about Saikoroshi-hen: presuming it’s set some time shortly after Matsuribayashi, why is Hanyuu only present in her non-human form?
In Saikoroshi, Rika’s mother is the reincarnation of Oyashiro rather than Rika herself. Because of this, Hanyuu is able to befriend Rika’s mom and live a fulfilling life. Since Rika’s mom doesn’t die the horrible deaths like Rika does in most arcs, Hanyuu is able to “move on” from her physical form (as well as the mortal plane). Rika’s life with Hanyuu is short lived, which is why Hanyuu takes the two of them to a new fragment every time Rika dies.
I think @rika meant that, since Hanyuu took physical form in Matsuribayashi, she should still be in physical form in Saikoroshi, since Saikoroshi is a direct sequel. (In Rika’s original world, not the “ideal” world.)
I’ve thought about this, but I haven’t come to an answer.
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