Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Sotsu Episode 13 Discussion

ToshiroIto said:

There was about 9 minutes of new content, more than any episode in sotsu so far.

Ashhk said:
the next one will be more interesting for sure

Si1verR0se said:

And why would you think that "Sword" and "Hanyuu giving Rika ability to remember" are important to the plot? I mean, sword itself is just a full contradiction to OG, since it was used specifically to "Kill demons", and in Gou anime it suddenly was used "to kill loopers".

Hulio said:
Well, they reached something even I didn't expect.
This was the first episode where I honestly skipped about half of it (The moment I saw Rika lying in the bed I was like NOPE)

This was honestly so retarded I don't even have words for this anymore.

@SkyhighCFC Well... Atleast we can agree that Rika definitely is the dumbest person around in these new seasons.
Who would have guessed that she didn't even figure out Satoko was the culprit, it was only Rena's memories and by accident and whatnot...
Speaking of which, I guess that ties everything up on the cover picture. Rena holding Rika's hand, helping her to win against Satoko.. smh.

Also nice debate about seriousness and refusal in here here.

I refuse to take your math seriously.
And that should be telling enough for the rest.

Man, if I had a yen every time I heard this, then mmmmaybe I could hire someone decent to write this stuff..

warpio said:

I would think the takeaway from this would be that "loopers" and "demons" are essentially the same thing, not that it's a contradiction.

SkyhighCFC said:

What cover picture are you talking about? The only cover picture I've seen for this is the one with Rika and Satoko in their St.Lucia uniforms in the sea of fragments below the rest of their friends whose faces are all darked out

SkyhighCFC said:


What cover picture are you talking about? The only cover picture I've seen for this is the one with Rika and Satoko in their St.Lucia uniforms in the sea of fragments below the rest of their friends whose faces are all darked out

ssjokg said:
Those two seasons are filled with posts of why we think Satoko and Rika are ooc.

I am sorry but I am no longer in the mood to repeat those for the nth time.

ToshiroIto said:


Just read the VN, they are completely in character. All that's different is them changing during the few years after Matsuri

ToshiroIto said:


Just read the VN, they are completely in character. All that's different is them changing during the few years after Matsuri

ruiadrmartins said:
At this point I'm just waiting for Battler to show up. Don't even care about the story anymore.

Emillian said:

Umi bros, we keep winning

ssjokg said:


TBH I want ΛΔ to appear and smash Satoko's face in then drown her in a . lake of sweets for the lols.

Chargecoulomb said:
If we ever do get a St Lucia recap, well probably see that Satoko was under HS delusins all along, and that Rika was trying to help her.

Keirik said:
Boring, boring, boring, Hanyuu, boring, boring, Hanyuu, boring, episode over.

PinkShibaInu said:

The Gou album covers featuring bitchtoko while Rena and Rika are holding hands.

Chargecoulomb said:


Im gonna compile some of my previous posts and reference this everytime someone makes a conflicting argument.

Ive read the VN, manga, and even the console arcs. Rika's personality hasnt changed at all. Shes just how she was at the end of Matsuri.

People see Rika drinking tea with the Ojou and think that shes changed. Rika was always a cynical, tea drinking grandma, her Mii Nipa~ cutesy personality is all an act. The way she acts in St Lucia is somewhat accurate to her character.

Sotsugous problem is much much more severe

Her abandoning Satoko however is wildly OOC. If youve read the VN Rika has a panic attack over loosing Satoko. This is someone shes been close with for over a 100 years, she wont yeet them away that easily.

If we ever do get a St Lucia recap, well probably see that Satoko was under HS delusions all along, and that Rika was trying to help her.

What is inexcusable is Rikas drop in Intelligence. Rika lost her braincells after Matsuri, and does not try to Try to recreate it in Gou.
Why?
Its the first thing she tries in Saikoroshi, and it should be the first thing she tries here.
Bumbling around like an idiot, saying cryptic nonsense to K1, is going against Every single thing she learnt in Higurashi Kai and you cant argue against that. Her main lesson is Kai was

waiting for shit to happen your way is not gonna work, you have to roll up your sleeves and work for the result you need. Instead of waiting for it to come to you.

Not to mention she had no problem showing up in the junkyard in Onidamashi, but didnt bother to check up on Takano until Nekodamashi.

If youve read the VN you know that Once Tomitake dies, Rika has no chance of beating Takano, in Miotsukushi and Matsuribayashi the first thing she did was warn Irie and Tomitake. Did that happen in any of the arcs? Nope.

This is an insult to Higurashi Kai, and every single one of its arcs.

Ps - Satokos character examination eh? Have you read Miotsukushi, Satoko gets more development there than she does in the entirety of Sotsugou.

What exactly did Sotsugou tell you about Satoko?
- Has no problem with killing her friends, not only Rika.
- Can forgive Teppei for abusing and hurting her and Satoshi but cant forgive Rika for some reason.
- Knows about all of Rikas loops but cant sympathise with why Rika might want to leave Hinamaizawa.
- Only felt Regret qhen killing Teppei (lol) but not her friends.
- Has no qualms about injecting innoncents like Akasaka and old man Kimiyoshi.
- Tricks K1 and screws him over in Tatari.
- Injects Mion, the most neutral and stable person in the group. For no reason than the lols.
- Rolls around in the ground laughing like an idiot.
- Falls victim to Euas goading.
- Kills her own regrets in Tatarikashi.
- Dodges sword strikes with the speed of a ninja? how? Who knows?
- Has no trauma for Teppei or Takano but somehow is traumatised by a fucking BOX. Bloody hell if a box punch is all it takes, why the fuck is she not kneeling over for Rena. Who packs a meaner punch?

PSS - Some people try to justify Satokos L5 trip by saying that the worlds are not permanent. Well, we see the world continuing even after Rika and Satoko leave. Meaning people have to live with the consequences of what Satoko does.

What about Keichiis Parents? Renas father? Akasakas wife and daughter? Shion? Akane? Ooshis partner Kumagi? St Lucia kids were probably scarred for life right? Mion in Onidamashi? They are left in these worlds to pick up the pieces from Satokos disaster.

Need I say more?

tokyorico910 said:
Is it just me or does this season seem a lot more censored? Like last season they showed all the blood & gore but in this season everything just gets shaded out

SkyhighCFC said:


You make very valid arguments, but I want to point out the fact that Rika never actually abandoned Satoko. At worst, she wasn't pushy enough in wanting to help her friend. She offered Satoko an olive branch MULTIPLE TIMES at St.Lucia, all of which Satoko refused to take. How is that her abandoning her? If anything, it just makes Satoko's character look even worse.

StardustReverie said:
It would be poetic if they were to flashback to satoko's high (middle?) school days next episode. This show would truly come full circle.

I don't think I'm intelligent enough to understand satoko's reaction to the box. Why would she have a trauma over such a minuscule thing when she's constantly murdering people in cold blood for like hundreds of years?

Chargecoulomb said:


Yeah thats my bad, but one can argue that Rika did give up on reaching out to her after a while, not that its Rikas fault to begin with. the entire St Lucia part is weird as heck. Which is why I dont think Satokos pov of it is 100 percent accurate.

And they spend 2 or 3 years in St Lucia right? Its very hard to believe that what the anime showed us were all the interactions between them. Its not impossible, but odds are that there's many interactions between Satoko and Rika at St Lucia that the show doesnt show us.

This ties into Rika being an idiot, but she should have at least been cautious about Satoko. Because the OG makes it clear that an unhappy silent Satoko is bad news. Being distant / angry / Silent/ Suspicious / and unhappy is often a sign of HS, so its weird that Rika didnt pick up on that.

ToshiroIto said:
I don't see how people can complain about there being 'no new content' in this episode, when it was literally 95% new content

Chargecoulomb said:

What exactly did Sotsugou tell you about Satoko?
- Has no problem with killing her friends, not only Rika.
- Can forgive Teppei for abusing and hurting her and Satoshi but cant forgive Rika for some reason.
- Knows about all of Rikas loops but cant sympathise with why Rika might want to leave Hinamaizawa.
- Only felt Regret qhen killing Teppei (lol) but not her friends.
- Has no qualms about injecting innoncents like Akasaka and old man Kimiyoshi.
- Tricks K1 and screws him over in Tatari.
- Injects Mion, the most neutral and stable person in the group. For no reason than the lols.
- Rolls around in the ground laughing like an idiot.
- Falls victim to Euas goading.
- Kills her own regrets in Tatarikashi.
- Dodges sword strikes with the speed of a ninja? how? Who knows?
- Has no trauma for Teppei or Takano but somehow is traumatised by a fucking BOX. Bloody hell if a box punch is all it takes, why the fuck is she not kneeling over for Rena. Who packs a meaner punch?

PSS - Some people try to justify Satokos L5 trip by saying that the worlds are not permanent. Well, we see the world continuing even after Rika and Satoko leave. Meaning people have to live with the consequences of what Satoko does.

What about Keichiis Parents? Renas father? Akasakas wife and daughter? Shion? Akane? Ooshis partner Kumagi? St Lucia kids were probably scarred for life right? Mion in Onidamashi? They are left in these worlds to pick up the pieces from Satokos disaster.

Need I say more?

Danpmss said:
Well, they chose the cliffhanger I didn't want for this one, so frustrating to end at the gun scene again, it's just not a good tease when you are being a slowburner through this entire season and reach the pivotal point once again. *sigh*

They revisited the other 2 eps of Nekodamashi in this one and gave us some Hanyuu and Eua content, as well as some Hanyuu miracle action again, as for the usual Higurashi ex machina, I don't mind much, part of the ride really.

This episode didn't really need to recap the entirety of the Watanagashi performed on Rika again tbh (could have easily be shown for just a bit in Hanyuu's PoV from the Sea of Fragments), that was definitely padded to get us to the gun cliffhanger, and that sucks.

The OST choices were the highlights in this one for once, and not the visuals, definitely created a much more unsettling overview on Satoko's egotistical manipulation through Rika's helplessness.

At least we run out of recaps now. This was the weakest ep of Sotsu in terms of content percentages, but I do have some good things to add regarding the Eua and Hanyuu conversation though, which made it worthwhile.

The best parts of the episode were of course:

1- Ciconia connection with Vier once again, as well as interesting terminology with wavelengths in the Sea of Fragments.
2- Confirmation that Eua is indeed part of Hanyuu, which is a theory I have been holding on for a while now, nearly confirmed in the previous episode.
3- Umineko talk regarding fragments as gameboards, and the people interacting in them with a culprit piece (Gamemaster as far as it goes), versus one that is trying to win against them as Players in said gameboard.

Connections with WTC stuff are by far the most intriguing content in Newgurashi for me, and considering we covered all of what it had to recap, these final last episodes might turn very interesting very quick, when it comes to the lore they are touching upon.

Hulio said:
Well, they reached something even I didn't expect.
This was the first episode where I honestly skipped about half of it (The moment I saw Rika lying in the bed I was like NOPE)

This was honestly so retarded I don't even have words for this anymore.

@SkyhighCFC Well... Atleast we can agree that Rika definitely is the dumbest person around in these new seasons.
Who would have guessed that she didn't even figure out Satoko was the culprit, it was only Rena's memories and by accident and whatnot...
Speaking of which, I guess that ties everything up on the cover picture. Rena holding Rika's hand, helping her to win against Satoko.. smh.

Also nice debate about seriousness and refusal in here here.

I refuse to take your math seriously.
And that should be telling enough for the rest.

Man, if I had a yen every time I heard this, then mmmmaybe I could hire someone decent to write this stuff..

r_justo said:
This has been really boring and a waste of eps and time until now. Now they have only 2 eps to finish all of the remaining story... It will awesome to see one of the 2 things, with a 3rd (turd) possibility:
1 - Rushing like hell to end the story
2 - Demonstrate that Satsu didn't have enough story for a whole season.
- The 3rd one (the most likely option, but it will be the end of the "Higurashi" name), they will be dragging for another season.

What option do you think they will do?? XD

Hulio said:
I... I honestly don't know.
The writing on this never before seen anime has been so unexpected that they could do anything.

Be it rushed end, or yet another season with more recaps from new pov.
It really could go either way, and it's honestly a lose-lose situation.

But if I had to bet, then I'd say that there's still more to milk. The franchise isn't leeched dry until it's completely dead.

Stay tuned for the next season of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni.
This time we'll have the St. Lucia arc from Rika's perspective!!
And that's not all, we will also see everything from the very beginning with the addition of never before seen Eua's commentary!

AssClapper69 said:

...

Chargecoulomb said:


I dont know about a new Anime, but Its safe to assume that part of the reason for SotsuGous existence is Mei.

I cant tell this for sure, but I wonder how succesfull the attempt to introduce new fans were?

Because we can see a few new fans, but not much. For Gou if I remember correctly up to 60 percent were new viewers. A considerable amount got confused / bored dropped Gou near the end.

How many of these new viewers actually came back for Sotsu?

SparkleDuck said:
Thank you for bringing logic to the thread yet again. Seems like MAL users do nothing but complain, to be honest.

AssClapper69 said:
The only reason i'm still watching is because Higurashi is one of my favorite anime, and one of my first since I got into the medium.

Since around the end of Wataakashi/start of Tatariakashi, I've been having trouble looking at the events from some of the characters perspectives and sympathizing with them, since I know what is going to happen. I usually try to look at the issues a character is facing (in most media I consume) and figure out how they are feeling, but here I guess I just can't do that since I know how they are going to react.

I am also getting the feeling that Sotsu is less of a new story for us, but seeks to accomplish two things:

1) Connecting Higurashi to the other less popular When They Cry Universes by hiding small details in the animation and including several small hints in conversations between characters. It's mainly for long time WTC fans and for world building the WTC franchise as a whole, in order to be able to connect all of them into one cohesive story.

2) To re ignite interest into the WTC franchise so that a potential Umineko remake/sequel anime can release and be successful.

I'm saying this because the original Umineko anime sucked, and Umineko is less popular than Higurashi overall. Perhaps, In order to gain approval from higher ups who wouldn't be confident in another unsuccessful Umineko anime, they made Gou/Sotsu to connect the two. Thus, there would be more interest for Umineko among anime watchers and the higher possibility of an Umi anime being greenlighted.

What I'm trying to say is, perhaps an Umineko anime was the original goal, but chose to make Gou/Sotsu to test consumer interest for it. It would explain all the re used scenes as they expected new viewers to watch. Ryukishi07 even stated that he encouraged new viewers to watch.