Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai

In the small village of Hinamizawa, Rika Furude and her friends live together in relative harmony. Beneath this mask of peace, however, lies a hidden darkness, one that Rika understands all too well. In this eternal summer, she has been witness to unspeakable horrors. Every time the clock resets, Rika must try to find the villain behind these senseless deaths before tragedy strikes again. However, trying to decipher a mystery when only half the clues are present proves time and again to be disastrous, and each time she believes that things will change, she inevitably fails. As the annual festival approaches, Rika begins her descent from hope to despair in her struggle to break the chains of fate entangling them all.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Furude, Rika Main

Tamura, Yukari Japanese

Ryuuguu, Rena Main

Nakahara, Mai Japanese

Sonozaki, Mion Main

Yukino, Satsuki Japanese

Maebara, Keiichi Main

Hoshi, Souichirou Japanese

Hanyuu Main

Horie, Yui Japanese

Houjou, Satoko Main

Kanai, Mika Japanese

Takano, Miyo Main

Itou, Miki Japanese

Sonozaki, Shion Supporting

Yukino, Satsuki Japanese

Bernkastel, Frederica Supporting

Tamura, Yukari Japanese

Ooishi, Kuraudo Supporting

Chafurin Japanese

Oomori, Hiroyuki Producer

Iijima, Kouji Producer

Okamura, Takema Producer

Fukao, Satoshi Assistant Producer

Reviews

Mar 31, 2024

mantus00

Recommended

When the first season of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni ended, viewers were left with more questions than answers about the dark mysteries plaguing the village of Hinamizawa. Thankfully, the 2007 sequel series Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai picks up right where the psychological horror left off, providing a riveting and unrelentingly bleak continuation that cements Higurashi as one of the most disturbingly effective thrillers in anime.

From the moment Kai begins, it's clear the writers have no intention of letting up on the suffocating sense of dread and escalating brutality that made the first season so gripping. New arcs like Meakashi-hen start off lulling ... you into a false sense of security with their seemingly innocent premises, only to violently shatter that calm with some of the most disturbing, unflinching scenes of violence and depravity you'll ever see in animation. The pacing is calculated perfection, slowly ratcheting up the tensions until the terror becomes an unbearable fever pitch.

What really sets Kai apart though is its masterful descent into psychological horror through the gradual unraveling of the core cast of characters. Watching once innocent, quirky figures like Shion, Rena, and even Rika slowly lose their grip on reality and transform into unhinged, tragic shells of their former selves is nothing short of riveting, making for captivating but deeply uncomfortable viewing. Kai gleefully takes these protagonists to their absolute breaking points, exploring just how fragile the human psyche can be when under the pressures of overwhelming fear, anxiety, and relentless delirium.

Not every arc quite lives up to the heights of the series' best chapters. Tsumihoroboshi-hen in particular feels like a bit of a slog compared to more explosive arcs. But even the relatively weaker installments contain a looming, unsettling feeling of thick atmospheric dread that hangs over every moment. And when Kai is firing on all cylinders like in the mind-bendingly effective Minagoroshi-hen, it delivers some of the most disturbingly memorable horror scenes and bleak psychological deconstructions you'll ever see.

What started as an intriguing but relatively straightforward supernatural mystery has morphed into one of the most gripping, psychologically complex, and unrelentingly intense thrillers in anime thanks to Kai's contributions. With its escalating brutality, unrelenting sense of paranoia, and gradual breakdown of its beloved character ensemble, it's a genuinely unsettling and haunting viewing experience in the best way possible. Brace yourself for a descent into utter madness.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Nov 14, 2020

ohohohohohoho

Mixed Feelings

It's a bit better than the first season, since this is where the show starts to really begin to make sense and show its true colors, even offering a few touching moments. While this season's part of the narrative is told much more methodically and features more cohesion, more life lessons and character insights, it still has many of the problems of season 1.

Frankly, I don't really love this anime that much, but it seems like a lot of fans of it are kind of misreading Takano's character and why the author has tried to portray her as sympathetic. I always find it strange when ... people love an anime without understanding the nuance of the narrative, which is where I think most of the value of a show often comes from: how the show elucidates murky points about life, morality and such that cannot be summarized in a few words, but instead need to be commented on through a character or a full story.

To say "she did ALL THAT just to PROVE some RESEARCH?" is a gross oversimplification of what is motivating her. To her, it isn't just a matter of her or the professor being humiliated, but their existence and life's work being denied over shady politics via an insurmountable, faceless bureaucracy. In a world where ones value is often equivocated to their contributions, their passions, the fruits of their labor, their very lives have been trampled. They are both victims of an unjust world wherein the truth they earnestly sought is only valuable insofar as it is convenient to those in power. In her mind, the professor's research spoke for itself, and didn't NEED to be further proven. THEY (the other scientists, entrenched in academic politics) demanded more proof just out of a desire to delegitimize research that had dangerous implications for them.

What is morality in an unjust world? If those scientists can completely devalue the professor's life's work, or Takano's so easily, what is the difference between one life and the lives of a thousand villagers to them? Surely she and the professor are not the only human beings who have been totally alienated from society in this way. You can actually draw a parallel between them and the Houjou family. Is it totally wrong for a poor family to value free money and housing from the government over the name of a village on a map? Of course wealthy landowners like the Sonozaki family will care more about preserving Hinamizawa than the Houjous, and the Houjous don't stand a chance against the Sonozakis because of their wealth and social influence.

That's why, at least for Rika, Mion and the gang, it's important to put the last card back in the deck. We make the rules of this social game. If you play old maid instead of old geezer, it's inevitable for there to be people like Takano: the arbitrary "losers" of the game, who are really just victims of fate or fortune. And sometimes these losers will want to strike back in the face of obvious injustice. The post-credit scene sheds more light on this idea. Even though Frederica intended for Takano to die, she has a chance to live happily. It's a totally random outcome and not what Frederica predicted, as life often goes, but perhaps it is better than what she intended. As a child, Takano is not yet "the villain" that Frederica thinks of her as.

The problems I have with this anime are that despite the fact that in the end, there seems to be a message the author was trying to get across, the show still, for the most part, just feels like a huge soap opera to me. It's a "psychological" thriller written by someone who doesn't seem to have a great intuitive grasp of human behavior, or just wasn't that concerned about making all of the characters feel weighted and real. Most of them are not very well developed, and their actions don't seem heavily considered. Characters do things just for the sake of mounting more suspense and mystery, rather than because it actually makes sense for the characters to do those things. Often it doesn't even feel like a character is necessarily the same person from one arc to the next, especially in the shorter, early arcs from season 1. And I don't just mean the characters who happen to be going crazy.

Hinamizawa's "virus" becomes this tremendous, amorphous plot device to make up for, in all sorts of places, the lack of meaningful relationships and motivations between the characters. It's triggered when the characters begin to doubt each other for arbitrary reasons, rather than because of actual trauma. But then later we find out that the symptoms can be alleviated by just... having a heartfelt enough conversation with your friends to reestablish trust? Or by the mysterious "Takano breathing method." The solutions to the problems of the anime seem to be so simple that the idea that it took 100 years to solve them doesn't hold up. I think we feel the effect of this in that the arcs can be really boring and frustrating to watch at times, because while WE are getting a few new details scattered throughout each run through, it's annoying to just look at these characters we aren't that attached to fail in the same ways. At first, it feels like we really need to figure out what the nature of the curse is to escape the loop, but that's just because we're being denied information about what the curse is. Once we learn what the mystery of the curse is, the backlog of failures makes no sense and feels like it was a waste of time.

Real psychological tension is not needed because if we want a character to go off the deep end, we just have them succumb to the disease symptoms. Character backstories largely seem like they're made up on the fly to fit into the plot, rather than to color the characters as living, thinking, troubled humans with families history and emotional baggage.

The two characters who felt the most fleshed out and whose motivations seemed coherent were Takano and Shion, who in the grand scheme of things, only had brief chances to shine amid their respective arcs. For as much as Satako's family gets fleshed out (though some of the details don't even completely make sense), she doesn't spend much time in the spotlight herself; whereas Keiichi drives a lot of the show's action and has some of the most important dialogue without even having a father with a fully drawn face. The whole world the story takes place in feels kind of flat and tenuous, even kind of ridiculous at times. Characters keep referring to these guys in "Tokyo" and we find out that there's just some vague, evil group of scientists, politicians and military guys called "Tokyo?" Just the place some country bumpkin would imagine a bunch of evil bureaucrats to hang out and scheme on them.

There are all sorts of ways to enjoy a show. Nothing wrong with just loving a plot-centric melodrama with good looking characters, but it's difficult for me to rate it much more highly than this based on what I think it has to offer. The writing isn't totally without merit, but filled with flaws that keep me from really feeling engaged in the drama. Hopefully this review has given other viewers some things to think about that they may not have considered. I for one am just happy to be free from June of 1983

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Nov 22, 2020

Neimaj

Not Recommended

It’s about time I watched Higurashi Kai. I tried watching this on three separate occasions in the span of six years. I’ve been a huge Higurashi fan for a long time now, but I’ve always had trouble getting into this one. After the third attempt I accepted the fact that Higurashi Kai’s first episode kinda sucks. The first episode is a boring slog to get through with the constant talking, and it has this strange white filter that makes the visuals difficult to see. Which reminds me of another anime I don’t like very much, Boogiepop Phantom. Characters will talk for long, long periods of ... time with nothing interesting going on in these dark areas, where you can hardly see anything, and you’re expected to pay attention the entire time while details are being spoon-fed to you. This is Higurashi Kai’s first episode in a nutshell. Luckily, the rest of the show isn’t as bad as the first episode, but Higurashi Kai still has plenty of exposition dumps. Episode one is just the worst contender.

Higurashi Kai is the sequel to Higurashi. No shit. This season of Higurashi explains more of the supernatural angle of the previous season. I am grateful that this season exists. The first season of Higurashi doesn’t have a proper conclusion and leaves more questions than answers. At the same time, Higurashi Kai, in my eyes at least, fails at being a proper continuation of the story. I enjoyed some of the first-half, but it didn’t quite feel like Higurashi to me. I like how the show reanimates one of the previous arcs of the original show and gave it a more positive ending. I got it! The perfect description for Higurashi Kai! “It felt less like a horror and more like a longwinded drama where people just happen to get killed.” That’s perfect. Keep that in mind when watching this show. The second-half is the point where I stopped caring about the story, entirely. Rika talks for eons in this show! It’s like watching a talk show where Rika is the only host and she never stops talking. There’s so much exposition. That’s not what Higurashi is known for. If the show wanted to explain something to you, it would do it in the creepiest way possible. And the characters wouldn’t drown you in dialogue. Exposition is okay. It’s important to inform your audience about what’s going on, but talking for such long periods of time will only bore them. Shows like the Monogatari series get past that issue with stunning visuals and engaging conversations. Higurashi Kai greatly fails at doing that. And some people accuse the original Higurashi of just being mindless violence or shock value. What a horrible opinion. The show is about characters losing their minds and becoming extremely paranoid. The show starts off introducing it’s characters, and everything is normal until the Cotton Drifting Festival. Then characters will slowly go insane and start brutally killing each other. Once that happens, the timeline resets and everything goes back to normal, starting with a new arc. I’m paraphrasing a bit to keep this review somewhat short. There’s usually a specific reason why the characters go crazy in each arc. Time resetting and any other supernatural event is explained in Higurashi Kai. Unfortunately, it does a pretty boring job at explaining these things to you.

And finally, the arc lengths. Arcs in Higurashi Kai drag out for way too long. In the original show, all of the arcs were always four to five episodes long. The perfect amount to tell a proper story. In Higurashi Kai, arcs can range from seven to eleven episodes long! I’m guessing that they didn’t want to use the same formula as before, but it doesn’t work well here. None of the arcs need to be that long. And the gore is also toned down in this season. Probably the biggest appeal of Higurashi, and it’s toned down compared to the original. Pretty sad. This season was awfully lame. I’m glad it exists, but I would never watch it again. It does have a halfway decent conclusion, so I’ll give it that. Most of this season was painful to get through. I’m sticking with the original show, from now on. If you're a Higurashi fan and you haven't seen Kai, I would recommend watching it once just to get it out of the way. My scores:

Story: 4/10
Art: 6/10
Sound: 6/10
Character: 4/10 (Not including Rika, it's a 5/10)
Enjoyment: 3/10
Overall: 4/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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