Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gou

Rika Furude and her group of friends live in the small mountain village of Hinamizawa; in June 1983, they welcome transfer student Keiichi Maebara into their ranks, making him the only boy in their group. After school, they have fun playing games and spending each day living their lives to the fullest. Despite this seemingly normal routine, Keiichi begins noticing strange behavior from his friends, who seem to be hiding the town's dark secrets from him.

Elsewhere, a certain person watches these increasingly unsettling events unfold and remembers all the times that this, and other similar stories, have played out. Using that knowledge, this person decides to fix these broken worlds. However, when certain variables change, the individual is faced with a horrifying realization: they have no idea what to expect or how to stop the impending tragedy.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Furude, Rika Main

Tamura, Yukari Japanese

Ryuuguu, Rena Main

Nakahara, Mai Japanese

Sonozaki, Shion Main

Yukino, Satsuki Japanese

Sonozaki, Mion Main

Yukino, Satsuki Japanese

Maebara, Keiichi Main

Hoshi, Souichirou Japanese

Houjou, Satoko Main

Kanai, Mika Japanese

Hanyuu Supporting

Horie, Yui Japanese

Takano, Miyo Supporting

Itou, Miki Japanese

Ooishi, Kuraudo Supporting

Chafurin Japanese

Houjou, Satoshi Supporting

Kobayashi, Yuu Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Oowada, Tomoyuki Producer

Kaneko, Hirotaka Producer

Nakamura, Makoto Producer

Reviews

Dec 27, 2024

MidniteAndBeyond

Recommended

This is a review of both Gou and Sotsu

THIS IS A SEQUEL, NOT A REMAKE! WATCH THE ORIGINAL FIRST!

OHHHHHHHH MYYYYYY GOOOOO- you know the rest. So ya, this may be a bit of a shock, but Higurashi has been in my Top 10 favorite anime series ever since I saw the original back in high school. I had NO idea what to expect from this new series and was really worried it might've just been another whatever after story like Rei and Kira were. But HOOOOOOO BOY, NOPE! THEY HAD A PLAN WITH THIS ONE! As soon as I started, I got completely locked back ... into this world. I remembered how much I missed these characters. I remembered how brilliant this story was and how it was executed. This may sound crazy (especially coming from me) but I was actually questioning if they were holding back on showing too much violence on screen because we're in a new era and its a new demographic watching, so maybe they wanted to be a bit more abstract with what was shown to us.... NOPE! DON'T WORRY! ITS BLOODIER AND GOREYER THAN EVER BEFORE!

I'm completely in the dark on what lies within the visual novel/manga of this series. Was this anime plot completely new? Because I really wanna know what the pitch was for this series. Did the original creator always intend to take the story in this direction and at this time? Or was this a new idea that came later on after the original series had long since wrapped up? I can see people not being happy with where the story in this one went, and I'm still a bit mixed on it, myself. But one thing's for certain; Higurashi did its job in making me feel as scared and uncomfortable as humanly possible. Not just with the violence, but in all the fear paranoia that came with unearthing the truth and being mortified by what I found....

I don't know how else it could've ended, and the ending in general for something like this feels SUPER difficult to nail perfectly. I'm not 100% satisfied with it, but I can't think of a different ending without uprooting the entire story they were trying to tell. So I guess I'll try my best to make peace with it.

Higurashi is NOT for everyone and I completely get it. But its truly and sincerely some of the most fun I've ever had in any story I've ever experienced. It was a brilliant execution of adapting a multi-route visual novel, and done in a way that hasn't really been done before or since. Its writing remains brilliant all throughout and the acting is some of the best and most haunting I've ever heard. Also THANK GOD the entire original voice cast returns for this new show! At least in the Japanese version. That's a huge plus for me. If you need something spooky to sink your teeth into this Halloween season, I can't give you a higher recommendation than this series. There's truly nothing else like it.

10/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Nov 3, 2022

ShiroFox2

Mixed Feelings

So even though people say its a reboot, it is kind of a sequel to the original series
by kind of i mean its technically necessary to see the original series to fully understand but not really.
its a lot of fun and takes a nice twist, but its a lot more mellow than the original in the plotlines

overall, i really recommend for you higurashi fans, but not for first time watchers who want to start off from the reboot. start from the original series. trust me, its so much better and will give context. and yes, i do recommend seeing it after you finish the original, ... as i said, i see it as a sequel.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Sep 17, 2023

IceCreamScene

Not Recommended

Well-written

"It’s not that hard to write a sequel, expand on characters and story in meaningful ways, and try to make it as good or better than the original. For most people, the standard was the original Deen anime from 2006-2007, and for a sequel to not even begin to reach the quality of that, let alone the original VN, is… well… maybe it just shouldn’t have been made in the first place.

Gou is unique in that, if you’ve consumed any Higurashi content before it, it will actively hinder your experience while watching it. Yes, you will have a worse time watching a sequel if you've ... already watched the original. I am not joking. A massive reason for this is the fact that half of Higurashi Gou is glorified recap; the first three arcs are adapted straight from the 2002 VN with detailed differences and a changed conclusion to serve the new narrative. This is why, if you’ve consumed Higurashi in any shape or form before this, it’ll likely bore you half to death. The episodes add absolutely nothing of value to the characters and even trivialize their arc and development from the original, making them somehow less of a character. These arcs only exist to serve the new narrative and to make sure newcomers aren’t too confused… which is so… completely backward.

Promotional material is mostly harmless; it’s literally just advertising, and that’s what it should be. I can’t decide whether I love the trailer for Gou or detest it. On one hand, it was a decently funny bait-and-switch, advertising the show as a remake of a beloved VN to then be revealed as a sequel in episode 2, and on the other hand, it would’ve been much better as a remake. This isn’t even mentioning the swarm of first-timers to the series starting off with Gou, partially due to the fact that the original Higurashi has become rather hard to watch legally. The original Higurashi Deen anime was… good, I guess, but to say it was totally faithful to the original and used its time wisely is just wrong. I was so hyped for a remake because of this, so you can imagine my dismay when I found out it wasn’t.

Shock factor in place of depth and horror.
If you’ve ever seen the original, I should hope that you came to the conclusion that the “horror” of it came from the artistically crafted plot and impactful death scenes. Taking the beginning of the original VN as an example, it starts with an ambiguous, repetitive bashing sound over Keiichi’s inner monologue as he commits an atrocity we have yet to see. It’s insightful, it’s mysterious, and most of all, it’s impactful. Then we come to Gou, which throws all meaning out the window and replaces it with unsettling images and sounds. Sure, it’s more in line with the traditional idea of “horror = scary,” but it’s such a poor choice considering the themes of the original. I’m not even saying it did the unsettling images and sounds particularly well either; they’re not thought out or even scary, really. Most of the death scenes result in the entire room they're in being absolutely covered in blood, no matter what weapon they’re using, and even ignoring the blood, everything from the characters to the animation falls in line with your typical slasher, rather than the psychological horror it’s supposed to be. And that’s the one thing anime does incredibly poorly; slashers succeed in scaring their audience due to it being live action and therefore relatable to an extent. Anime can’t do that, for obvious reasons.

It’s just not scary. In any sense of the word.

I honestly feel bad for the voice actors, who continuously put up a stellar performance no matter the quality of the Higurashi content they’re featured in. They’re one of the shining stars that I got from scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of compliments to give the show. It’s astonishing how they can put up this good of a performance even after 14 years of voice acting for the franchise, and I have endless praise for all of them. Though when it comes to the new coat of paint the sequel got, I’m not so kind. I really, really thought about this, and I prefer the original art and animation. Intentional or not, the bad art and questionable animation definitively set a tone that matched the narrative of the show. Gou’s just feels so bland and basic; it doesn’t change to match specific tones presented by the plot, nor is it good (This does NOT include the EDs, which were amazing). It’s “good,” don’t get me wrong, but that’s all I can give it, and it links back into my argument about the lack of depth the show has, and I think the animation is a rather nit-picky example of that.

I’ve held off talking about the main issue of the first season so far, which is undoubtedly the story and pacing. The pacing is so incredibly inconsistent in the worst places. Take, for example, the first 13 episodes. I know I’ve mentioned them a lot, but I cannot stress enough just how bad they are, and I will keep talking about them until I’ve convinced you. As I said before: “half of Higurashi Gou is glorified recap.” This by itself isn’t a bad thing; however, none of it is cut. Despite being a sequel, it goes out of its way to explain almost every single thing we should already know by this point. And as a result, it just feels like you’re watching the original Deen anime again. This isn’t even contained to the first 13 episodes; parts of Sotsu and later in Gou we get Matsuribayashi-hen recap when plot should be taking place.

In a post-episode 13 world, the plot does actually happen, and the story makes meaningful progress for the first time in 4 hours. It arguably gets worse. The pacing goes into overdrive to the point where major character development is cut down into 4 episodes. It gets worse. Out of those 4 episodes, only roughly 2 of them (2 halves of 2 episodes put together and 1 good episode) have any meaning, while the others are relegated to padding and murder scenes. The murder scenes in particular could’ve been done well; all they would need to do is portray Rika’s active thought processes and mental deterioration in a meaningful way as she was being killed, but all they gave us were a few lines of dialogue from her each scene, most of them being completely irrelevant.

Funnily enough, Gou’s peak was when it was acting as it was meant to be from the start, a sequel to the original. The main characters get nice development, and the story that ended from the original is directly continued.

The second half of the arc is where the actual answers are revealed to us, and most importantly, we get to see one of the best characters from the original go down a dark spiral called bad writing. Some of the decisions made here are so bad and frankly disrespectful that I couldn’t take any of them seriously. It also clearly shows that the writer has no understanding of human emotion, with many events that should’ve at least put a strain on the main character's mental state just further fueled their questionable motivation for their even more questionable goal.

Now I have no doubt that the higher-ups at studio Passione had some influence in how this was written. Considering the general outside perspective of Higurashi, especially the anime, being along the lines of a murder-thriller with lots of gore and violence, they likely pushed the people actually making the show in that direction because they thought it would make a decent profit.

Overall, this show is really bad; I hate it from the bottom of my heart, and nothing is likely to change that.

Remember: It’s not canon if you don’t like it; just forget it existed and move on with your life. - Me, when this first aired."

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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