No, not horrible as in poor quality! 2006 was a very strong year for originality and good writing in anime, and one of the year’s great standouts (the winner of the Originality award along with Haruhi Suzumiya) was the horror-mystery series Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni. However, with this year’s season, it has long since departed from the strict horror genre, which marks a significant turn in the way we are supposed to understand the show. That’s the subject of today’s Anime Blogging Collective “12 Moments” series.

Warning: today’s entry contains significant spoilers for Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni. If you are unfamiliar with the series/game and wish to remain virginal this is not for you. ;)

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…he might come up with this after watching Higurashi. (See the song this is based on, “Soul Meets Body” by Mr. Gibbard’s band Death Cab for Cutie, here.)

The singing is not 100% there–more like 95% there. But the lines scan perfectly to “Soul Meets Body,” and it’s pronounced correctly for a change. And being a fan of anime, Higurashi, and Death Cab, it’s a gratifying combination.

Thanks to Wakaranai for spotting this.

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The Massacre arc, as one might expect, lives up to its title in this, the concluding episode. But the feeling at the end is that the rules of the game have changed forever, and that there is indeed a way out of the darkness. If it indeed possible to find some kind of hope in the midst of death, Rika sees it at last.

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Not that many, actually, though some essential ones remain. And this episode continues the trend of being simply, well, different–totally different outcomes and plot points and a different focus altogether. In many ways this is a different show from the first season, though they’re intimately interconnected.

The bulk of this review, of course, contains spoilers. Read the spoilers at your own risk.

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It’s just like this show to find an ominous turn in the midst of hope, and foretell the arc’s title “Massacre”–though of course not in the way we were led to think. And, honestly, without knowing where it’s exactly heading, I can’t say for sure whether it works or not. But as they say: “I have a bad feeling about this.” Especially since, as far as I know, this show is going to go on for another season, and at this point I’m really not sure how much more there is to know; most of the key mysteries have been revealed this season.

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A lot of fans have said that this is the best arc of all in the entire Higurashi cycle, and the way it’s going so far, I’m starting to believe them. Compared to the previous arcs, it’s definitely the most different, the only one that isn’t suffused with despair (and thus the one with the highest degree of tension–for once there is genuine question about the outcome of the story). I’m really pleased with the way the writers are now starting to give us payoff for all the arcs we’ve watched previously.

Of course, given the title of the arc is “Massacre”…maybe it really will be for naught after all.

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Warning: spoilers ahead (if the title wasn’t enough of a giveaway already :))

Gosh, did they have to make things that clear? This episode, which begins a new arc, pretty much lays down the ground rules for what was happening in this Higurashi world, point by point. It also seems to represent a hinge of sorts, where the characters finally can begin to make real decisions and either, depending on the way the authors want to take it, go into redemption or even deeper tragedy.

The most important change is in Rika–and, it turns out, her ghostly alter ego/personality, Hanyuu. Hanyuu, it seems, is the one with the high-pitched squeaky cutesy voice, and in the midst of a portentious set of dialogues, it’s her that gets the chibi treatment.

I’d said in earlier articles that the constant fatalism of Rika was getting annoying after a while. Here, this episode and it looks like this arc takes that on directly: it brings up the question, can fate be altered? Do we live in a deterministic universe in which the same things are decreed to happen over and over again? Or can things, just maybe, change?

One of the most interesting things about Higurashi is the degree to which it reflects and displays the premodern view of the world, a haunted world filled with overwhelmingly powerful forces that sweep human beings up unwittingly and yet responsibly. It is a world centered around a festival dedicated to a god who may be capricious, protective, and locally omnipresent. Interestingly enough, this fact didn’t hit home to me until I saw the bonus DVD episode (the “Cat-Killing Arc“) and heard Rika talk accurately and eloquently about the concept of taboo, and it summarizes the whole world of Higurashi very well:

In this world, where there is light, there is also shadow, and in the same way, where there are good places, there are bad ones as well. There are instances where treading upon such places will make people miserable without reason. When us humans are unable to define such dreadful places well in words…we call such places “taboo.”

The Powers that Be must be respected rather than conquered or dismissed. In the premodern and medieval world, powers and forces were often concentrated in concrete places or objects: think saints’ relics, or special shrines. One of the ways the modern world was “dis-enchanted” was when it lost the sense that the Numinous, the Holy and the Other, was tied to specific places. This show brings it back.

Another one of the key aspects of the premodern pagan understanding (East and West) is its fatalism. Many of the Greek tragedies are about heroes fighting, and losing, against their set destinies, and it’s no accident that one of the more appealing and noble pagan philosophies in ancient Rome, Stoicism, counseled a serene resignation to the circumstances of the world. In Buddhist-inspired cultures, the cycle of reincarnation and karma meant that the way you turned out was in part the product of something that happened long before your present life.

Keichii’s challenge to a small part of fate–the game they are scheduled to play–is enough to shake Rika out of her funk and restores her hope that things might be different this time. In Buddhism, the eventual goal is to escape the cycle of reincarnation into Nirvana, and since we’ve learned that the Higurashi world is one recycled situation after another (literally!), the goal too of all the characters is to find a way so that the murders and paranoia cease at least. It might be through love and forgiveness, as hinted at the end of season 1. Or it might be through just a series of small steps that, when added up, get bigger and bigger until you arrive at a different ending. Or, alternatively, the story could end tragically; the characters think they can escape their destiny, but in the end it finds them anyway. That would be a depressing, but traditional and classical, way to end this.

This continues to be one of the most fascinating animes made in recent times and I look forward to watching more.

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I may have been busy reading and grading homeworks last week, but I actually did watch some anime too. Here’s a roundup of everything I saw last week.

Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei 3

The Lolcensor is…nowhere to be found? Maybe they’re not trying to satisfy Standards and Practices after all!

The cornucopia of mentally ill girls continues to grow (at least in part on the part of Kaede) and the harem aspect of this show continues to become clearer. Because that is, in the end, what this is–a harem comedy featuring some disturbed and mentally unstable girls following an equally mentally unstable guy. They all want him. They all adore him. Even the OCD girl wants to marry him. And now there are panty shots: the conventions are complete.

I’m beginning to wonder what exactly the point of this show is, though. It’s clever and funny and inventive, but it also seems pointlessly random at times. (Case in point: the final scene after the credits, aside from the lawsuit. Is this yet another reference I’m missing?) It seems to be a fractured perspective–not unlike that of Franz Kafka, who has a namesake in this show!–but from no one particular point of view.

Still, there’s way too little originality in the anime world and it’s refreshing to see something different.

Hayate no Gotoku 17

Man, I haven’t written about this show in a good long while. I’ve read a number of people who are either giving up on the show or are getting bored of it, and I can sort of see why. The show could potentially become one of those endless sitcoms, like Ranma, where the concept is milked for all its worth long after it ceases to be funny.

This has not happened to the show for me. I still like it a lot, even if it’s no longer the star of the season. (Any season that contains Higurashi has that spot taken. Sorry!)

Some of it is the tsundere power of Rie Kugiyama, though in this show, she’s definitely more on the dere end of things. Some of it is Hayate’s indefatiguable desire to please and now, increasingly, protect his young manga nerd charge. Some of it is seeing Maria-san’s angry face scare the crap out of Hayate…

I understand that this particular episode was an anime original. I was able to tell the last time that happened–it was frustratingly random and directionless. I wasn’t able to tell with this one. It wasn’t as great as the immediately prior episodes, where Hayate fights other combat butlers, but it was more than passable.

And I see the next episode is a swimsuit episode. Do they need one when they have the new closing credits anyway?

Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni Kai 4

What’s interesting in the current arc is how much more subdued it is. By this time in season 1, Keiichi was in full blown frantic paranoia mode and the creepy factor had been turned up to 11. There was no humor by then, whereas there are still silly and chibi scenes in this one at the beginning–though things of course are beginning to shift with Satoko suspecting a stalker. And, as they say, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

I’ve come to realize that this is what the show excels at showing: how the bonds of trust and friendship can be slowly undermined and eventually broken by fear, suspicion, and ultimately hate. In each arc, there is always a scapegoat, a person who is left out of the community and must suffer the consequences–either as a victim or as the one who lashes out. In the previous arc, we saw a move toward forgiveness and restoration of those bonds at the end, though it seemed a little forced. In the current arc, Rika’s heavy sense of fatalistic foreboding seems to portend something bad again. If anything, Rika’s attitude is getting…how can I say this…annoying? Over and over, we hear “there’s nothing that can be done.”

Still, I’m eager to see what this most intelligent of thrillers will continue to offer up. The arc appears to be in its final stages and I want to see how it all ties together in the end.

School Days 2-3

Everybody hates Makoto, it seems. Me, I just find him clueless in the way I was at that age, though he’s more blatant and indiscreet than I was. This is a show where the awkwardness between the principal three characters gives me that familiar shiver of recognition up the spine. You really can’t expect high schoolers to be emotionally astute. Makoto might be especially insensitive–people have rightly hammered him for ignoring Kotonoha on their first date, one part that I did find unrealistic (a guy like that doesn’t seem like he gets lots of dates, and considering how he was squealing like a girl about what he was going to wear, you’d think he’d be stupidly enraptured by his girl). He’s especially dense to miss the signal that Sekai did with that kiss in episode 1. But it’s only an exaggeration of reality, I think–I know plenty of guys who have missed signals the girl thought was patently obvious.

I did find the fanservice in episode 3 to be rather gratuitous, though. It’s one thing in the context of Makoto feeling lust; it’s another thing when it’s so we can simply find out that Sekai wears striped underwear. It actually doesn’t fit the tone of the show, either, which is subdued and generally believable.

The general lack of music actually helps a lot; it actually ratchets up the tension a bit in the more awkward scenes. Especially when you know a bad end is probably coming. (The last line of episode 3 is telling, and it’s all too easy to relate to for anyone who’s inexperienced with the way infatuation and teenage relationships work. That boredom is a test, and it is one that they will almost certainly fail, given how immature almost all these characters, especially Makoto, are.)

If this keeps up, School Days will definitely steal the crown from Kimi Ga Nozumo Eien as “best soap operatic drama based on an H-game” anime. It’s far less histrionic and lurid so far.

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Contains spoilers–even in the screenshots! Be warned.

The beast in me
Is caged by frail and fragile bonds
Restless by day
And by night, rants and rages at the stars
God help the beast in me.
–Nick Lowe

We saw in the opening sequence just how much the new series was going to focus on Rika. The previous season only hinted at her role in this accursed town, or her abilities–only, in one arc, to reveal her grisly end just prior to the Great Hinamizawa Disaster. Episodes 2 and 3 of the new season pretty much spell it out clearly, with her two voices (only one of which is Rika–and it’s not the cute “Nippa!” voice which is Rika’s), and with Mion outright admitting: Rika is likely none other than the current incarnation of Oyashiro-sama. And she is fated to die at this year’s festival.

That she is something of a god in this universe is clear at the start of episode 2, in which the multiply overlapping storylines are directly alluded to and beginning to be justified (though, if one has a knowledge of this show’s game roots, it’s also kind of funny: like the game, the goal is to get to one of the “happy endings”). I think, in fact, the first few minutes of episode 2 teeters on explaining too much, but given the number of completely unresolved puzzles that are left in this show, it could also be a welcome bout of clarity. There has been an increasing sense since the final arc in season 1 that a reckoning, an accounting, is on its way–some sort of explanation not only of what and how but the meaning of the events. And Rika is at the center of it.

The idea of Rika, an incarnation (or more accurately probably, an avatar) of a god, being fated to die sets off from interesting questions in this wannabe theologian’s head. My guess is that in some way, Oyashiro-sama really is protecting the village, and his* death is what will trigger the destruction of the entire town which we already know will happen. It would explain the fatalism of Deep Voiced Rika and the predictions of her own death. What is unexplained is still why the disappearances and murders each year are necessary–does Oyashiro-sama require it not only to be propitiated, but also to live? (Many cultures have rituals to ensure the continuity of the seasons and therefore crops, and therefore their survival.) Or, perhaps, since presumably Oyashiro-sama takes on different avatars over time, Oyashiro-sama undergoes generational cycles of death and rebirth? But the village’s end seems permanent and a close to any cycle, so that seems unlikely.

What’s clearer, though, is that the story and motive behind Oyashiro-sama is complexifying. Most of the first season presented him as a kind of demonic, bloodthirsty deity who demanded gruesome yearly sacrifice and who was behind a curse that played upon everyone’s desires. A more naturalistic explanation began to surface at the end of the first season and the first episode of the current one–but now, we have an avatar apparently show up in the form of this really cute little girl who speaks with two distinct voices. And in a way, solving the theological mystery–who is Oyashiro-sama?–is key to solving the show’s mysteries in general. Because everyone in this show is affected by this god and/or the myth inspired by him, whether it turns out to be true or not. Like any deity worth his salt, he is the center. All plot threads and questions lead back to him.

One last thing: I’ve always found interesting about Higurashi is the degree to which the kids’ games were often used as foreshadowing–sometimes obviously, sometimes subtly. Even from episode 1 in first season, no matter how slapstick the antics, every game was tinged with menace, particularly the whole concept of “penalty games.” Here it seems the writers were deliberately mocking their narrative strategy, in which some of the same ominous music, horror movie tropes, and explicit references to zombies were used for humor. (Might the game’s outcome be a straightforward foreshadowing of this arc’s resolution? It was such in the previous arc, though I felt it was handled a bit too obviously.) Nevertheless, in every arc so far, the real ominousness only begins when the photographer and the police detective show up. And it’s no different here.

Finally: I guess the lack of an episode preview is a permanent thing. Alas.

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Contains spoilers for Season 1

The show I’ve been most looking forward to this season, Higurashi Kai, is finally out on fansub. Higurashi won my “Originality Award” last year along with Haruhi Suzumiya for taking two hackneyed genres–harem and haunted village horror–and creating a harrowing, postmodern set of short stories about what drives people not only to do but to become evil. Though it sometimes lurched into outlandish plot twists, and much was left unexplained at the end of the first season, it was still one of 2006’s most substantial and dramatically compelling shows. It forced the viewer to empathize with and understand characters who do horrific things. No small feat for a show that features such obvious harem lolis.

So when I heard that they were going to devote the second season not only to new material, but to provide answers to some of the puzzling turns that happened at the end of the first season–I was excited. And they have delivered in this episode, which by all rights ought to have been in the first season. It provides an epilogue to the events and purported happenings of the first season’s final “Atonement’ arc, though substantial clues are thrown out for future exploration, like the identity of Rika. In fact, if the OP is any clue, she is going to be a very prominent part of this season. This episode already hints strongly at who she might be.

The mood of the show, judging from the OP and the episode itself, seems more melancholy than sadistic and creepy. The centerpiece of the episode is a broken adult Rena, who after 2 decades has yet to recover psychologically from whatever happened in the Great Hinamizawa Disaster. (The writers are clearly trying to find a way to relate all the arcs in season 1 in some way.) Even when Ooishi, unfairly, pushes her to try to remember and she gets angry–it is not the crazed, vengeance-filled berserker mode we saw in Season 1. It’s a heartbreaking helplessness instead.

Knowing the final outcome of the town–everyone but Kei-chan and Rena dies–frees the show to focus on character and not rely too much on suspense and shock. We are going to be treated to the why more than the what behind the town’s secret tragedies, and see for ourselves just how a town can be literally cursed unto death in both body and spirit. The show’s strength is in how it shows that this curse is at once both outside and inside the townspeople, something that has a malignant power of its own but seems also to come naturally from the fears and desires of the people. Nobody is merely a victim; everyone is in some way personally responsible. The stories of the characters trying to deal with the curse of Oyashiro-sama is thus always a story about the inner struggles of the characters and whether they choose to resist or give in to the beast that is, first and foremost, always inside and part of themselves.

Some quibbles which no doubt will change over time:

• No episode preview? I loved the episode previews in season 1. They were arty and actually good foreshadowings of the themes of the next episode, with some lovely music too.
• The OP song, while good and by the same artist, is not as instantly memorable as the first season’s. The graphics are also more generic than the juxtaposition of cute and disturbing the first one did so well.

90% Recommended for your Anime Diet–but only if you’ve seen the first season. You’re going to be very confused otherwise! (Plus, you should be watching it anyway unless you have a weak stomach. It’s one of the finest and most inventive horror anywhere, but it is very disturbing at times.)

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