Well I mean she talked about Rika and Mion so I believe she has interacted with them at some point.
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It would make sense if Natsumi has visited Hinamizawa in the past, as she is distantly related to the mayor of the village. I could easily see her sitting in on town meetings like Mion and Rika do. But even if she were to visit Hinamizawa for a short time, I donāt think sheād come in contact with Hinamizawa Syndrome. I say this because tourists like Akasaka are able to travel to and from Hinamizawa fine without ever exhibiting any symptoms of Hinamizawa Syndrome. This makes me think that perhaps you must be living in Hinamizawa for some time in order to get Hinamizawa Syndrome, and that itās not something that you come in contact when you are just visiting the village for a short while. Perhaps Natsumi lived in Hinamizawa during the early portions of her life and doesnāt remember? Or maybe she visited Hinamizawa for a long period of time?
Natsumi mentions that the Watanagashi festival is bigger than it used to be, so she must have attended it a couple times. She probably attended almost every year because that would be expected of a member of the Kimiyoshi family, or even if not, her grandmother would probably drag her there.
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I havenāt read Someutsushi in a while, but wasnāt Natsumiās grandmother from Hinamizawa? I think she could have caught Hinamizawa Syndrome from her.
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You know, this would explain her mom going bananas and murdering her grandma/dad. But who knows, that scene could be a part of Natsumiās paranoia kinda like Keiichi in Onikakushi. Maybe in reality she was the one to kill her family only because she perceived them as a threat, even though they werenāt threatening her whatsoever. But if Hinamizawa Syndrome passes between family members, maybe it was her mom doing the murders after all.
Umā¦ Toudou survived.
But yeah, thereās no doubting that Natsumi has been infected with HS. As for how, the genetic theory is certainly plausible, but I was under the impression reading that she actually spent quite a lot of time in Hinamizawa. She seemed very familiar with the town and itās people. Itās even possible she lived there for a time.
One thing that struck me as odd reading this is that it showed images of Hinamizawa full of gas. I thought there was no gas?
Toudou survives when Natsumi kills her family, but in the end Natsumi ends up stabbing him on the rooftop. 
And I thought the āgasā was a narrative created by āTokyoā so no one would suspect them in orchestrating GHD. Or at least, I think that is what it said in the Emergency Manual 34 scene in Minagoroshi.
No, Toudou wasnāt killed on the rooftopā¦ She attempted to strangle him but then he got away and killed herself instead. Tomoe tried questioning him but decided he was too emotionally fractured to question. You canāt question someone whoās deadā¦ She didnāt even bring a knife to the rooftop, not sure what scene youāre remembering :s
Huhā¦ My version of Someutsushi cut off before that. All I have is Natsumi strangles Toudou (my memory is absolute garbage when it came to that scene 
) and then creditsā¦ I probably installed the patch wrong or something. Who knows, it could be because Iām running all of this on a mac.
The script wonāt be completely different just because youāre playing on a maaaac!
Pfft 
Oh look, she already figured everything out. I think I grabbed theseā¦right at the start of chapter 2
Well, this arc was awesome. It sure was a lot of fun to read something from Higurashi I have not read before, and since it centered on people outside of Hinamizawa directly it was particularly fresh feeling.
I want to take a moment to just say that characters in this arc were really well handled. Natsumi, the female detective, and especially Chisato. Seriously, Chisato especially was really a lot of fun, she felt like she probably could have become fast friends the core club members back in Hinamizawa and that the antics would have been all the more fun for it.
The core themes of friendship, lies, guilt, forgiveness, trust, and mistrust were all here in full force, making it feel very at home with Higurashi core canon. Natsumiās insecurities, and her tendency to keep everything bottled up made a really good springboard for the decent into HInamizawa syndrome.
So we see the death of her family play out two separate ways. The first round was written off as a dream, the second happened so quickly. The first scenario played out as if her mother was the primary initiator, the second she kind of discovers the bodies after waking up. I was curious so I pulled out my volumes of Onisarashi-hen (oversimplified recap the end of Onisarashi - even though it is not an āoutside workā It seems less read so I thought the spoilers should still be opt in ) The events in Onisarashi - the deaths play out basically like they do in the dream, only it is revealed at the end - specifically to Akira that that all of the physical evidence points to Natsumi having committed all of the murders. The thing here is that in that ending Akira chooses to staunchly stand by her side, and thus when they have the confrontation on the roof he accepts her and they both end up surviving and presumably reaching the Happy End (though I feel odd calling an ending where you still killed your whole family Happy) So in manny ways that terrible dream almost feels like it was Natsumi having a glimpse at what may have been her happy ending in a different fragment So in that way the two arcs tied together almost feel like a mini encapsulation of the whole greater Hinamizawa story - sure you have removed the greater conspiracy of the disaster - but as a story that shows the importance trust in your friends, and how unaddressed doubts can eat away at a person the story was on point.
So one small thing, kind of bouncing back to my screenshots from the beginning, if you were reading this with only the arcs through Meakashi, I was kind of left wondering if the focus on Natsumiās health that kept coming up, to what degree you can practically gleam clues that this ties back a sickness? In a lot of ways, this chapter kind of removes the concern about the Human culprits behind the Hinamizawa disaster - since they are physically and mentally just not in the picture - and really does a lot to make you think about the curse aspect. Natsumi, even as far removed as she was with the building conspiracy you see happing in Hinamizawa directly still has her life ruined by āOyashiro-samaās Curseā
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I thought this was going the same way as Onisarashi-hen would (and I still remember the bits) with extra spices, but I was naive it seems. My ship sinks magnificently (in a bad way) hereā¦sighs (feels like remembering Rose Guns Days, eh. The pain). Unreliable narrator is really frightening and great. Iām still a bit confused about what actually happened there, and is intrigued by Minaiās journey. Thereās one about her, isnāt it? I canāt wait. Also, time to read Onisarashi-hen againā¦
I feel dread when things are going wrong. Higurashi experience I missed. Thereās nobody behind me right now, right? ā¦Itās midnight.
By the way, the voice actors are great. Natsumiās voice can be too cherry itās unnatural sometimes, but her screams and awkwardness are perfect, chilling my bones. Especially when she diesā¦ ā¦ ā¦ My feels.
For the charactersā¦I think theyāre great, especially Minai. Natsumiās worries are normal and relatable. But honestly, there are confusing moments with Chisato-Tamako about Natsumiās feelings towards Akiraā¦or did I miss something? Also, my confusion to timeframe between the time of Natsumiās date and her dream and reality of tragedy can be on purpose, but the restā¦hmm. It might be just me. Time transition is pretty hard to do.
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Yeah I ended up rereading Onisarashi-hen after finishing hahaha. Some parts were unclear to me as well. But oh maan I feel you on the HIgurashi experience. I missed it so much.
Once that murder happened I was all.
Iām finally back in this story~~
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As much as I love Someutsushi, the one thing that really bugs me about it is Natsumiās ādemon voiceā. This doesnāt appear in any other chapter and really makes the whole thing feel unnecessarily supernatural and over-the-top. And I mean, it doesnāt make sense either. Thereās no way Akira has contracted HS, right?
Hmmmā¦ Ok well that was interesting.
I liked this chapter. It had a very relatable feel to it. The struggles that the characters (mostly Kimiyoshi) face (decisions for the future, love woes, struggling family, unfamiliar environment, inferiority and wanting to fit in) are all ones that people in there teens would expect to face. The story felt pretty solid on the whole. Not too much in terms of mysteries to solve on the whole once you know about HS, so that is a bit of a disappointment. I liked the little twist that Kimiyoshi was actually dreaming but that her family was dead anyway (presumably by her own hands).
Iām going to have to say, I was a little disappointed in the characters in this chapter. Personally I really only liked Minai and Chisato. Natsumi wasā¦ well she was alright. I thought that she felt kind of like a discount Keiichi in some ways. To be sure there were some differences but the similarities between this arc and Onikakushi are striking. It felt like a reversal of what happened to Keiichi but really very similar things. To be fair, this would make sense since both suffer from HS but itās just too much the same for me to look past it. Because of this I felt like Natsumi was just a poor replacement for Keiichi. In all honesty though, it might just be that Keiichi is the kind of person that I would love to be friends with and Natsumi just isnāt really. I guess in the end itās personal preference.
I will give one more minor criticism of the work. I felt like there were a lot of plot threads and ideas that never really went anywhere. Whereas in Onikakushi the central point is that Keiichi is distrusting his friends and there really isnāt anything distracting the reader, Someutsushi has several different things that just kind of dwindle out in the end. Itās not that they are unimportant as they establish for the reader that Natsumi is going crazy. However, it makes the story feel like it lacks focus.
I do have to give the story props for that ending though. That was quite a ride. A+ for the psycho yandere. Gotta love those demon faces that we get to see. Iām also in full agreement with @Aspirety that the demon voice is kind of unnecessary.
Other than that the music and art were ok but nothing really to write home about except for that one picture of a bloody Natsumi sitting in her living room stunned. THAT art was haunting and I loved it.
I would love to see more of the detective in future arcs and Iāve been assured that she is indeed present in other console arcs. I loved her character and interactions with people. I appreciated every minute of her on screen and I wish that the story made more use of her, perhaps cutting between her questioning people and Natsumiās life. Just a thought.
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I highly doubt Akira has Hinamizawa Syndrome. Heās not from/never been to Hinamizawa. I feel like that would have come up at some point in the arc if he had any sort of connection with Hinamizawaās residents outside of Natsumi. I just chalk this one up to good old paranoia and nothing else. That said, who knows? Maybe he contracted it from Natsumi somehow?
Hinamizawa Syndrome is very confusing as a disease. Most germs are essentially spread in one of four ways. Way one is through the air (sneezing, coughing, this is how influenza spreads). The second is through skin contact (this is how you get chicken pox). The third method is by fecal matter that later ends up in the mouth (this is how you get salmonella) The fourth and final is through bodily fluids (this is how you get most STDs/STIs). Iāve always assumed that Hinamizawa Syndrome works through the first method. But looking back at Himatsubushi, I was kinda confused as to why Akasaka never came in contact with the disease. I thought to myself, āmaybe you have to live in the village sometime before coming in contact with Hinamizawa Syndrome, instead of just visiting it?ā Airborne diseases affect people almost instantaneously, since you just have to breathe in order to come in contact with them (that said, just because you have come in contact with a disease doesnāt mean you always become sick, as sometimes the body will destroy a virus before you even begin to have symptoms).
So, how exactly would it spread to Akira? I think in his case it almost has to be airborne. Due to living in the city, he wouldnāt have to worry about food/water being contaminated with fecal matter. I also highly doubt he and Natsumi ever kissed considering how paranoid the two of them were (so no fluid contact). They could have held hands or something, but one of them would probably have to have a rash (skin born diseases usually take the form of rashes/bumps/distinct skin markings). There are no rashes mentioned here, or anywhere else in Higurashi, so I kinda doubt that Hinamizawa Syndrome spreads through skin contactā¦ But if it spread through the air, then maybe he could have gotten it from his time with Natsumi?
Who knows~ Iām not a med student so Iām not exactly sure how that would work. I may also be completely wrong about diseases in general. As I said, I have absolutely no medical training whatsoever. Those who are in medical school, please correct me as Iām probably wrong. All of this information Iāve gotten either through the internet or my lackluster health education.
But yeah, I agree with you that the whole demon voice thing was rather silly, as well as unnecessary. Itād be a bit more justified if he did have HS somehow, but itās still a bit too silly to take seriously.
Also, @Seraphitic I completely 120% agree with you that Natsumi feels a little bit too much like a discount Keiichi. I think thatās because like Onikakushi, one of the main themes of Someutsushi is that you should trust your friends. And just like in Onikakushi, a lot of the problems in the arc could have been solved if the friends stopped keeping secrets from one another. Iād like to think this parallel was done on purpose so that new readers can pick up on the similarities between Natsumi and Keiichi so that they can try to solve the mystery of what is happening to these characters.
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I liked seeing Natsumi because I find more of myself in her than I will ever in Keiichi. Natsumiās drive was that she is insecure in herself by default, Keiichi has overblown confidence. Her hesitation in being able to lean on her friends because she is afraid of burdening them, and then her image with them feels distinct enough for me from Keiichiās mistrust that is born of him finding out information they were allegedly hiding from him.
I need to go back and check the timeline of events pretty closely before I could present these as proper theories, but does Akira come in contact with Natsumi or her familyās blood at any point before we can completely dismiss Natsumiās ability to be reliable as a narrator? It is a bit of stretch, but I wonder if it is possible that Natsumiās dream - and in turn the events of Onisarashi - were actually closer to the way things went down in this world, and Akira contracted HS being exposed to the blood of infected people when he was in the house to save her, and the part from when Natsumi āwakes upā plays into the delusions of the Infected Akira whoās heart was not strong enough to believe in the good core that is Natsumi.
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I donāt think the story presented enough evidence to conclude Akira had Hinamizawa syndrome. But he did allegedly get conked on the head with a vase and was nearly strangled to death, both of which could result in brain damage. Plus he endured enough emotional trauma to develop standard human mental illness.
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Poor Akira and Natsumi. I donāt have any idea if Akira is infected with HS, but anyway, hereās my thoughts after I read Onisarashi-hen again instead, I canāt help it.
Onisarashi-hen does a much better job. The beginning feels rushed and all of sudden, but itās overall better for me, even though it mostly focuses on the romance (Someutsushi-hen has plus for friendship). Plus for (Onisarashi-hen spoiler) bittersweet ending, where the two get married. Although they might lost their youthful dreams, theyāre happy together, and Natsumiās psyche is slowly becoming better. There are some negative indications, but overall, itās a pretty much happy ending, but I call it bittersweet because Natsumi killed her family and spent five years locked. Someutsushi-hen feels like it only exists for Minai, not for Natsumi or Akira, in my opinion. The way things ended in Someutsushi-hen actually fits because Akira and Natsumi never develop a strong bond and understanding, unlike Onisarashi-hen, so I have no complaints about it.
I think thereāll be other arcs with Natsumi in it, so I canāt wait to see how the other arcs play out.
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